Between Sleep and Awake
by OUATLovr
Summary: Baelfire had never lost the simple faith that a child has in an adult. Not until he came to Neverland, and maybe not even after. An AU where Hook may be able to give Baelfire up to the Lost Boys, but he can't quite give up Milah's son, and this sets in motion a series of events that no one quite expected. Fix-It fic, multi-chapter.
1. The Loyalty of a Pirate

A/N: I'm playing fast and loose with canon in this fic, and some things will not be the same as they were in the show. I've had this idea for a while now, and I hope you enjoy this new story. I'd love to hear what you think of it so far in the comments.

 _"Every child is affected thus the first time he is treated unfairly. All he thinks he has a right to when he comes to you to be yours is fairness. After you have been unfair to him he will love you again, but he will never afterwards be quite the same boy. No one ever gets over the first unfairness."_

-Peter Pan, by JM Barrie

Baelfire has never lost the simple faith that a child has in an adult, despite the numerous opportunities he's had to do so. It is what convinced him that there was still good in his papa, that his papa could change, right up until the moment he was suspended over a portal and the man chose the dagger over his own son.

He still trusted Wendy's parents, even after being abandoned by his Papa and left to fend for himself on the streets of London. Still trusted Hook, enough to tell him things about his childhood that he has never told anyone else, before learning who the pirate really is.

It is what attracted the Shadow to him in the first place, in Victorian London, where the shadow had been attracted to Wendy and her brothers because of their innocence.

Never lost it, that is, until this moment, packing the small amount of things Baelfire can count as his own into a narrow rucksack while Starkey, one of Hook's men, watches in the doorway of the cabin that Hook gave him while aboard.

He might miss this cabin. It is larger than the room he had with Papa, back home, though not quite so large as the one he shared with the Darlings, and the ceiling is lower than he might like, but not so low that he might bang his head on it. The bed is soft, and the constant rocking of the ship lulls him to sleep each night. There's a porthole that looks out into the water, and Bae amuses himself, when he can't fall asleep, by watching the fish swim by.

Once he even fancies he sees a mermaid.

Starkey clears his throat from the doorway, signaling that it is time, and Bae turns to him, giving him a glare that might rival his Papa's, when he's angry. He figures he shouldn't feel too guilty about it; the man is a pirate, after all, and Bae is no longer under the delusion that pirates should be trusted.

Giving the cabin one last cursory glance, Bae heaves the rucksack over his shoulder with ease. It feels too light, and he remembers that when he lived with his Papa, he had so many things he would not have been able to fit them in this bag.

And here he is, thinking that the scant amount of contents will help him survive on a potentially hostile island, alone and cut off from the rest of the world.

His Papa was right; he was mad to jump through that portal, mad to think that any world could be kinder than their own.

Starkey sighs this time, muttering under his breath, "Captain's orders, Starkey, have to obey Cap'n's orders," and Bae decides that he has finally overstayed his welcome.

And that is how he ends up standing on the deck of the Jolly Roger in the dead of night, pondering how he could be such a fool to trust a _pirate_ in the first place. He should have known better.

He has spent his whole life listening to his Papa condemn pirates as the worst scum to walk the face of all the worlds, after what happened to his mother. Even if everything else his Papa told him may be rubbish, he should have listened to that.

"Eager to go, I see," Hook's voice cuts through his thoughts as he walks up onto the deck, and Baelfire hefts his bag higher on his shoulder, as if he is afraid Hook...the pirate...might take it from him. Even if everything in the bag belongs to said pirate.

He does not turn around, does not face the pirate captain. He doesn't think he can.

A gust of wind floods in from the ocean, spraying him lightly in seawater, as he is standing to close to the ship's rail. Baelfire wipes at his eyes, pretending it is only the seawater he is wiping away.

He isn't naive enough to think this fools the pirate, and stares at the black seawater sloshing against the sides of the Jolly Roger as if it, personally, is to blame for his current situation.

It is slightly disconcerting that the pirate is willing to let him off the ship in the middle of the night, without even the moon to guide Baelfire once he reaches the island. Two of his pirates will escort Bae on the little dinghy, but he is on his own once he reaches land. Bae would almost be suspicious if he had not insisted on this very thing, on leaving as soon as possible.

He doesn't think he could spend the night in such a close vacinity with the pirate without killing him, and Bae won't kill him. Can't.

He won't become like them. His Papa and this pirate, and probably his mother as well, if she condoned it enough to run off with a pirate, as Hook claims. His mother.

That is the worst of all this, Bae thinks. That, after years of his papa telling him that his mother was a beautiful, lovely woman who only wanted the best for her son, that she had been brutally murdered by wicked pirates, he must find out the truth from a _pirate_. That she ran off with a scoundrel and thief and left Baelfire and his papa forever.

He knows that Hook told him she wanted to come back for him, that the only reason she left was Rumpelstiltskin, not Baelfire, but he doesn't believe the pirate's desperate, hurried words. He doesn't think he can, even if Hook tries to keep him aboard this ship.

The very fact that he is letting Baelfire go, only attempting to convince him to stay with defeated words that he must know cannot change Bae's mind, only helps to convince him that Hook doesn't really want this.

Suddenly the whole time he has been with the pirate isn't the happy memory that Baelfire thought it was before he found out the truth. Because he can't help but wonder if Hook even cared about him all this time, or if he just wants to honor his memory of Milah.

Honor. From a pirate.

"Just drop me off anywhere," Baelfire mutters between gritted teeth, staring out the waves as if they will rescue him from this ship and send him back to the Darlings by his mere willpower alone. He wishes they could. What use is magic if it can never be used for anything helpful?

He doesn't believe that it is possible to get back to the Darlings from this world, whatever he boasts to the pirate. He can't believe it, and he knows that Hook doesn't really, either. And some part of him, however small at this point, still believes the pirate.

Starkey mentioned something about the Indians being able to help with that sort of thing, when Baelfire asked, but the boy gets the impression that the bosun doesn't know the half of what he talks about, over a bottle of rum. Still, it gives Baelfire a small flicker of hope, and, he resolves, if he can get to them, perhaps he can find help. Of course, he will have to get past the shadow, and those boys who came looking for him earlier.

"Oh, you really think you can survive on your own?" Despite the harshness of the words themselves, Bae can hear a concern in Hook's voice that he does not want to consider.

"I've never been given the choice," he answers, and the bitterness that seeps into his voice reminds him eerily of his Papa, whenever someone might call him a coward. Before the dagger, of course.

He thinks now that that man, the man before the dagger, was the strongest man he's ever known, and if he could really have one wish, it would be for that man to still be alive.

He died a long time ago, though, and now, here Bae is.

"Well, you have one now," and the pirate's voice is pleading, desperately begging Bae to change his mind. The boy can't help but equate this image with that of his father, kneeling before the green portal and pleading with Baelfire to stay, promising to change so long as they _stay_ in the land of magic.

Fitting that Baelfire abandoned one land of magic for another, one father for the next.

No, he tries to convince himself. Hook was never a father.

The ship rocks lightly under his feet, and Bae slowly turns around, awarding the pirate with an unnerving stare.

Does he really? Have a choice? he wants to ask, but something makes the boy bite his tongue.

Instead, he stares at the pirate, assessing him, and Bae is annoyed to find that he can't make sense of what he sees. Hook seems genuinely sorry, but Baelfire cannot rationalize that with the man his Papa spent a lifetime villanizing, even if Hook did not kill Milah directly.

Even if the man who really killed her was his papa. He knows he shouldn't believe that, should dismiss it immediately as another of the pirate's many lies, but he can't. He can't because Baelfire has seen his Papa kill impulsively, out of anger, and he knows that, if the rest of Hook's story is true, this part must be, as well.

That doesn't mean he wants to spend another moment in this man's presence. It is still his fault.

Baelfire's mother is still dead.

"Anywhere will do." He turns away again, before the pitying eyes of the pirate see past his charade and know how terrified he is of being left alone again.

"I get your angry," the pirate tries once more, moving behind him, and Bae has to force himself to stand absolutely still, to not turn around. "But it doesn't have to end like this. This ship can be your home. Your family."

Out of the corner of his eye, Bae can see Hook smiling hopefully at the idea.

Indeed, his voice is so full of excitement at the mere possibility, that Baelfire thinks he is going to be sick, and has to struggle not to give a scoffing laugh at the pirate's suggestion. Family. A family of angry, drunk pirates who resent his presence and their captain, who lied to Baelfire once and will probably do so again, as he wishes.

He had a family, once. He will never have one again.

"Just say the word," the pirate tries again. Say the word.

Like magic.

Perhaps he can see the hesitation in Bae's eyes, because the pirate says, softer now, "It's not too late to start over. I can change, Bae. For _you_." He's desperate now, leaning forward as if he thinks this argument will make a difference in the final outcome.

And perhaps it might have, before, when Baelfire was an innocent young boy who still thought adults could be trusted. But Bae's spent too many years listening to the same words from his papa, and he knows what lies those words really are, even if Hook believes them now. He harbors no doubts that, once upon a time, his papa also believed such words.

"You say that, but I know you'll _never_ change. Because all you care about...is yourself," Bae hissed out, trying not to sound so angry but failing completely. Just like my Papa, and his precious dagger, he thinks.

Letting Bae fall through that portal alone so that he can keep it. Abandoning Bae for his own power.

Bae stares at the pirate, unable to say those words, and turns away, because, as he looks into the pirate's eyes he sees his Papa, eyes hardening before a kill that Bae knows he cannot stop his papa from committing, no matter how much he pleads.

He can't help but wonder, if this pirate had never stolen away his mother, if his Papa would never have turned to magic. If he could have had the life he was supposed to have, with a family. A family, like the Darlings. And he can't help but resent the pirate for that, even if it is only a furtive wish.

As he turns his back and walks away, hanging his head, he can hear Hook letting out a deep, regretful sigh.

"Thank you," the pirate says, and Bae turns, eyes questioning. "For reminding me what I'm all about." Bae stares, uncomprehending. "Killing your father."

Baelfire can't keep the shocked look of betrayal from his face in those first few moments, as he takes an involuntary step away from the pirate, his back colliding with the rail of the ship. He knows he has nowhere to go until the pirates prepare that dinghy, and the cool wooden rail against his back does not comfort him.

He told Hook about the dagger. Told him that it was the only thing able to kill the Dark One.

If there was a doubt in his mind that Hook truly cared about Baelfire, it is gone now.

The boys that work for _Him_ appear then, the ones that Hook hid him from before, when he still wanted Bae, climbing over the rail behind the boy. They are silent, and Bae might not have noticed them if he hadn't been listening all along for their approach. Somehow, he knew this would happen, even if he has tried to deny it.

"You're not letting me go," Bae says, because something needs to be said, no matter how obvious the words are. Even though he knows this was always a possibility, because the moment he set foot on the island _He_ would have likely found him anyway, he can't keep the shocked hurt from his own voice.

"How would that help me?" Hook asks, voice loud and mocking, and Bae flinches at the sound, flinches at the firm realization that he should have never trusted this man.

The words that wouldn't come a moment ago slip out now, because Bae can't hold them back, and, if this is to be the last time he sees the pirate, he wants Hook to remember them. "You hated my father so much, you didn't even realize you were just like him!"

He doesn't realize he is shouting until he can feel a hand on his chest, can feel the vibrations humming beneath that hand as it gently pulls him away.

He hates the way his voice cracks on those final words, betraying him just as surely as Hook has now.

He does not get to see the pirate's reaction to his words before the boys drag him over the side of the ship, and so he can only hope that, just perhaps, the words might sink in.

The feeling that inhabited his stomach when his Papa let go of his hand over that portal is back now, twisting his stomach in horrible knots, and he finds that he can't fight the boys. Perhaps he doesn't want to. What is the use anymore?

He is broken.

"You have the boy," he can hear the pirate say as they drag him off the ship, voice indifferent. " _He_ will be pleased?"

Was it all a trick? Had the pirate always intended on handing him over to them?

The lost boy does not respond, simply climbs down into the little dinghy beside Baelfire in silence.

Perhaps it is just Baelfire's imagination, but the Lost Boy seems...disappointed with Hook. Baelfire can't imagine why. He has what he wants.

Someone else Bae's hands together behind his back, shoves him onto his bottom. He goes down without a fight, staring up at the rail of the Jolly Roger and daring Hook to lean over the side and see what he has done.

It is not the first time someone has broken a deal with Baelfire. Indeed, the memory of his father's betrayal, his shining, terrified face as he let go of Bae, let him fall through that portal alone, has not yet left the forefront of his mind.

And with this new, fresh betrayal while the wounds of the last one have not yet healed, Bae thinks he will never trust again.

His last sight of the pirate is as one of the lost boy's throws a burlap bag over his head, and the pirate leans over the side of his precious ship to watch. His eyes are almost sad, begging for forgiveness, but Bae finds that he cannot give it.

The pirate stands there silently, as if waiting for Bae to say something else, to beg to come back. To beg to be rescued from these boys to live with Hook. Perhaps he might believe that Hook would fight for him, if Baelfire would give him some sign.

As if he would, now.

Lifting his chin, Bae lets the blindfold fall over his head and stays silent, resigned to his new fate, whatever it might entail.

At least whomever has taken him now cannot be half so bad as the pirate who killed his mother and destroyed his Papa in the first place. Though, he cannot even be sure on that point. The Dark One has many enemies.

Bae does not realize that the bag he had over his shoulder falls to the deck of the Jolly Roger before he is taken away.

The boat ride to the shoreline is silent, and Baelfire finds himself grateful for the silence, for the few moments he has to adjust before whatever happens next.

He is scared, though he tries to hide it behind his defiant stance, and then behind his resignation. Scared of whatever these boys are, whomever it is that they work for that wants Baelfire so badly.

The dinghy slams against solid ground, the grating sound ripping through Bae's ears as someone jumps out to secure the line. Other than this, the beach is silent, and Baelfire wonders desperately if perhaps now he should fight back.

He doesn't think their shadow will allow him to, if it is around here somewhere, and he no longer has the matches the Darlings gave him to ward it off.

Then one of the boys is grabbing him by the collar, a greasy hand yanking him to his feet. His shoes scuff against the dinghy before he hears the splashes of the other Lost Boys hitting shallow water.

He cringes as he is tossed over the side of the dinghy, submerged to his thighs in cold, murky seawater. He can almost see it, through the bag over his head. At the very least, he can see the outline of it against solid ground.

The lost boys push him forward, not bothering to remove the burlap sack that blinds him, and Baelfire wonders what is so important that he cannot see it. The location of the beach? But it hadn't taken that long to reach it, and he had been able to see the beach from the Jolly Roger.

Unceremoniously, one of the Lost Boys, the only one whom Baelfire has ever heard speak, rips the cloth off his head, and Baelfire gasps at the sudden change in the air. It is the first thing he notices, even before taking in his surroundings. Where before it was stale and salty, it is now brittle and smells of dead fish and grass.

Baelfire wrinkles his nose at the stench, tries to bury his nose into his elbow, but the Lost Boys will have none of that.

Before he has the time to take in his surroundings, the Lost Boy is shoving him further up the beach, further from the water.

He debates trying to run before his eyes clear and he sees how foolish this would be; the entire beach is populated by these boys, all carrying weapons, where Baelfire is not. They are standing in a semi-circle around Baelfire, watching him with curious and not altogether unfriendly, eyes.

They are all of different ages, some of them so young that it makes Baelfire blink in surprise, having thought of these "Lost Boys," up until this moment, as something of a small army for _Him_ , whoever _He_ is.

They are all wearing what appears, Baelfire notices, to be clothing made from plants on the island, and he wonders if they are wild boys, and _He_ is their god. Perhaps they intend to sacrifice Bae to _Him_.

That thought is not at all comforting.

Hook has spoken of _Him_ only sparingly, and the crew are too terrified to do more than whisper in Bae's presence; evidently they think that the very mention of _Him_ in front of one of the boys he seeks will bring his Lost Boys running.

They do not stop in their little march until Baelfire is practically on the other side of the beach from where the dinghy landed, standing before one of the older Lost Boys, a dark-skinned boy who stares down at Baelfire with a different expression than all the rest: one of distaste.

"Is it the boy? The one he wants?" the Lost Boy-Bae thinks he heard someone call him Felix-still holding the scruff of his collar demands, and someone grabs his chin, forcing it up into the cool night air so that all can get a better look at him.

There is a pause, during which Baelfire forgets to breathe. So, whomever they are, they are looking for someone. He can't think of anyone his Papa has managed to anger in a different world, though, and decides that maybe he is safe.

"No. No, it's not." Baelfire breathes a sigh of relief all the same, for he cannot help but believe they have some foul purpose for whomever it is they wish to find. Considering the lengths they went to in claiming Baelfire, that is...

"It's your lucky day, boy," the Lost Boy holding him smirks, and his foul breath smacks against Baelfire's face, unrelentingly. "You get to live." Baelfire pales.

Then Felix laughs, throwing Baelfire towards the group of boys behind him. "Put him with the rest." He tosses Bae towards three other Lost Boys, who grab him roughly and begin dragging him away.

Those are the words that decide Baelfire's fate, on the island that is Neverland. Those, and the words spoken by Hook, words of betrayal and anger.

He is under no delusions, now, that he will ever find a home. Not like the home he had with the Darlings.

That thought is cemented when he is marched past the group of boys and thrown into a bamboo cage at the edge of the beach, where the sand meets a dark, eerie forest that is not unlike the one where Bae's Papa let him fall through that portal.

Yet this one is far darker, and seems to have a presence all of its own that causes Baelfire to cringe when he stares at it too long. The darkness is tangible, climbing through the trees and beyond that to far off mountains. Baelfire can hear animals howling within that forest, can hear twigs snapping ominously from afar.

Looking away quickly, he finds that he is not alone in this cage.

There are two boys, both younger than he, quivering at the other end and clinging to each other, staring at Baelfire as if they think he is a threat.

The boys-his captors-slam shut the door to the cage, tying it secure with thin ropes, before muttering something to the guard and walking off to join the others around a roaring fire.

The cage is being guarded by only one Lost Boy, and not a very large one at that, and Bae thinks that if he were not shoved inside the bamboo prison he would have easily been able to overtake the boy, even with his hands bound, as they still are.

The boy does not meet his captors' eyes; he stares straight ahead, towards the beach, one hand clutching so tightly to a distinctly homemade spear that Baelfire can see his white knuckles, even in this darkness.

Baelfire sighs. Even if he could manage to trick the boy into freeing him, he doubts he would be able to get past an entire beach of Lost Boys. If he plans to escape, and he is not entirely sure, at this point, that he does, it must be at a more opportune time.

He leans towards his fellow prisoners, because, even in this darkness, he can see the shining dark liquid protruding from the taller of the boys' arm. He can't help but want to help, even with his hands bound as they are.

That instinct has been ingrained in him for so long now, since long before his Papa was the Dark One. Helping people has always been the one thing Baelfire does well, even if most of them refuse to accept his help on principle alone.

The boy flinches back, fixing him with a cold glare. "Don' touch me," he hisses, and Baelfire sighs, hunching down in a way that he hopes is non-threatening. He is not unused to this reaction, though it is usually because of who his father is.

"That shadow thing get you, too?" the second boy asks, and Baelfire turns his attentions to him.

He is younger; can't be older than ten or eleven, saltwater and sand sticking to his ratty clothes. He is wearing the traditional clothing of a London beggar boy, rather than the coarse greens and browns of the Lost Boys, and something about that comforts Baelfire, though he cannot say why.

Even in the fading light, he can see this boy's fiery red hair, standing out against a pale, freckled face. It's something that would be particularly hard to miss.

Because he doesn't feel the need to delve into the story and remind himself of the _pirate_ , Bae shrugs, "Yeah."

The boy reaches out, gesturing for Baelfire to turn around so that he can untie his hands. The bindings fall away with embarrassing ease, and Baelfire rubs his sore wrists, coaxing the blood back into them as Freckles once again moves away.

"My name's Adam, and this is Tom," Adam jerks his head towards the boy with the wounded arm, who does not acknowledge Bae's presence with even a nod. "Don't mind 'im; 'e's been skittish since they brought 'im, yesterday night."

"...Baelfire," he says, only when it is clear that they are expecting it.

"Well, that's a strange name," Adam shrugs, and Baelfire decides then that Adam is entirely too talkative for a prisoner kidnapped from his home. "I would say it's good to meet you, but..."

Baelfire feels the smallest hint of a smile stretching his lips. "Yeah," he says finally, when the silence grows unbearable. As much as he wants to sit in brood over Hook's betrayal, fourteen years with his Papa has taught him to handle bad situations by thinking fast. And Adam's words have only added to his questions. "So, they've just left you in this cage all that time?"

Adam repeats his earlier shrug, leaning back against the bamboo bars and closing his eyes, seeming almost content. "They don' seem t' know what to do with us," he says, and sounds almost proud of that fact. "Give us food and water every day, around noon, far as I can tell, but, other than that, they leave us alone."

Baelfire nods, processing this. He has assumed, until this point, that the Lost Boys were taking them somewhere, somewhere with more privacy than the beach. And if they weren't, he would have to adjust any escape plans accordingly. In Tom's wounded state, he doubts the older boy would be of much help, but perhaps Adam is an ally in all this.

Tom hisses suddenly, uninjured hand rushing to the wounded arm as a new pouch of blood begins to flow, staining his pale shirt a dark red and dripping down towards his trousers.

Adam winces in sympathy. "Tom 'ere tried to fight it. The shadow. Dropped 'im a hundred feet, it did. Could'a smashed 'is face in. Must not be too worried about that."

Baelfire glances sideways at him. "Who are they looking for?"

The boy shakes his head. "'Eck if I know. I thought they'd let us go, since we're not 'The One' or what 'ave you, but they threw us in 'ere instead. And Tom needs someone to look at 'is arm."

"Mind if I?" Baelfire asks Tom gently, because he's had enough experience bandaging up his own wounds when his Papa didn't heal them with magic to know the basics. He's not really in the mood to continue to talk with these boys, and he just wants to go home, so he's unsure why he asks in the first place. But he does. "I might be able to help."

Tom stares at him distrustfully for a moment, dark eyes wide and fearful, and Bae can't help but wonder if that is how he was looking at Hook, only a few minutes earlier.

After a moment in which Baelfire feels as if he is being dissected for weaknesses, Tom nods, holding out his arm.

Shaking his head to clear it of any more thoughts of that pirate, Bae shuffles forward, reaching for the wounded arm as he might a wounded animal.

He's used to children being afraid of him, given who his Papa is, so the fact that Tom so obviously fears him doesn't bother Bae as much as it should. Actually, it makes him feel rather sad; that Tom is afraid of Baelfire.

It's a flesh wound, Bae quickly deciphers, and nowhere near as bad as it sounded, from Tom's description, but Bae knows that it will need stitching up of some sort.

Which is why it's a tragedy he's left his sewing kit at the Darlings', he thinks wryly, and wonders if this is the first time he's laughed since entering Neverland.

The times with Hook don't count, he tries to convince himself.

Tom is eying him warily, probably wondering what he finds so amusing, staring at an open wound as he is, and Baelfire quickly sobers.

"I'm sorry," he says finally, pulling away and wishing he could be of more assistance. "It's not that bad of a wound, but it'll get infected if it isn't treated, and I don't really know how to treat it in here..." he glances around their little box. Then he rips off a piece of his shirt, wrapping the torn cloth tightly around Tom's wound and marveling that the boys have not thought to put pressure on it.

Tom shrugs, as if it doesn't matter, and goes back to his corner of the cage, cradling the wounded arm against his chest and brooding. Baelfire thinks he is glaring with unnecessary hostility at the piece of cloth now wrapped around his arm.

Adam raises an eyebrow at him. "The shadow dropped us here, on the beach. The Lost Boys were already waiting for both of us, then. But you...you came by boat. How is that? The Shadow told us that this place is full of magic, and boys can only come here when they are with him." He sounds full of hope, as if he thinks Bae knows another way out.

"I did. But I got away...for a little while," Baelfire mutters, and doesn't feel the need to explain himself further because he's exhausted, and talking is taking up energy that might be used for fighting back, if the Lost Boys are really up to something obscene.

The confrontation with Hook has left him emotionally drained, and for a moment he is grateful that the pirate didn't just drop him off at the island, because he doesn't think he would last the night. In the next second, he is horrified that he thinks being thrown in a cage is better than braving the wild on his own, but he cannot retract the thought now.

Adam gives him a strange look, and moves closer to Tom, as if, with those words, Bae has pronounced himself some sort of traitor.

Baelfire sighs, leaning his head back against the bamboo bars and closing his eyes. The moment he does, he realizes how much effort he has spent just trying to keep them open in the last several minutes.

The silence of the camp is welcoming.

The Lost Boys, sans the cage guard, are currently huddled on the other side of the beach, whispering amongst themselves in low voices that match the beat of the waves upon the shoreline. Their fire has gone down now, a faint flicker amongst two charred logs. Even the woods seem to have grown quiet, though the occasional howl can still be heard.

Baelfire doesn't remember falling asleep, doesn't remember four Lost Boys picking up the cage as the sun peaks over the horizon and carrying it deep into the forest, so deep that the cries of Tom and Adam will not be enough to alert the pirates that something has gone horribly wrong.

Baelfire sleeps, and it is a peaceful, dreamless sleep, the first sleep in a long time where his father does not haunt his nightmares, forever dropping him into the portal to fend for himself.

He will need this peaceful rest, when he awakens.

The island knows this.


	2. Welcome to Your New Home

_"But it doesn't have to end like this. This ship could be your home, your family. Just say the word. It's not too late."_

 _-And Straight on 'Til Morning, 2x22_

He dreams. It is a pleasant dream, where Hook is still his friend and not his mother's lover, the traitor responsible for her death, and Baelfire smiles at that thought, even though he's never had such strong thoughts, such memories, during a dream before, and that makes him wonder if this really is one.

It doesn't really matter; sometimes the dreams he has are better than reality, after all. Sometimes, they are even more realistic.

He is flying.

He isn't certain, exactly, how this is, for he knows that it is quite impossible for a pirate ship to fly through the air, rather than the water, as Hook's now is, but it is only a dream, and somehow he knows that, even now, so he resolves to enjoy it while it lasts.

Hook is standing beside him, laughing at something Baelfire has just said, though he can't remember what that is. Smee and Starkey are standing just a bit off to the side, giving the orders, though Smee is sending Hook that concerned look he has been since Baelfire was brought on board.

Baelfire has the feeling that Smee's objection is not to him specifically, but more due to his fear of _Him_ , and of the Lost Ones. In fact, he thinks, Smee is avoiding him for that purpose, so that he doesn't get too close to the boy who he wants gone, and so Baelfire doesn't let it bother him.

After all, he's known plenty of people who don't object to him personally, but want nothing to do with him. It comes with being the son of the Dark One, even if that isn't the reason Smee is staying clear of him.

 _"Yo ho ho,"_ Hook lets out a shout, and Baelfire jumps beside him, blinking and fighting down a blush as the pirate laughs at his startled expression.

" _And a bottle of rum!"_ the men begin to chant, a song that Baelfire has heard them sing only once before. They sing it perfectly in tandem though, as if this is very much a regular occurance, and Baelfire, despite the disturbing lyrics of this song, somehow finds it comforting.

Then the world tilts, and the _Jolly Roger_ is careening down, with no warning at all, straight toward the ocean. Baelfire grabs onto Hook's arm in an attempt to stay upright as the men around them stumble and are falling down, toward the bow of the ship.

Foggerty lets out a scream, and Baelfire opens his mouth to do the same, before the sound is stolen from his lips as the ship once more twists and plummets straight down. If he and Hook were not standing directly behind the wheel, he has no doubt they would have joined the rest of the pirates at the bow of the ship.

The sea below them is splitting apart in two great waves as if to swallow the _Jolly Roger_ whole, and Baelfire has no doubt that it can do exactly that.

And then Hook is twisting Baelfire's hand from his arm, prying off his fingers one by one, and Bae glances at him in surprise.

"Hook?" he asks, rather uncertainly. The bow of the ship disappears beneath the waves, and the waters of Neverland are slowly swallowing up the rest of it. He can hear some of the men screaming; the rest are already gone, including Smee and Starkey.

And when Hook finally turns to face him, it is with a scowl. "You're doing this lad! It's your fault!"

Baelfire stutters even as Hook kicks his feet out from under him, sending him onto his back on the wooden deck, and he just manages to keep from flying down after the rest of Hook's men by grabbing onto the mast, wrapping his arms around it desperately.

"I don't understand," he tries. "I-"

"You're the son of the Dark One!" Hook hisses, and then runs over to where Bae has found himself desperately attached to the mast, holding out his hook as though planning to stab it into Baelfire's fingers. "You're the son of the crocodile that killed her! Why do you think I gave you up to _Him_?"

And this time it is Baelfire's turn to snarl out, "You betrayed me! I trusted you, and you killed my mother and handed me over to them!"

"Your father betrayed me first, Baelfire," Hook says calmly, and then Bae can't hold on any longer, because he does not want to hear those words, and he is falling, the sea choking the air from his lungs as Hook laughs-

When Baelfire wakes, he is no longer falling off of a ship with the Pirate, nor is he lying facedown in the Lost Boys' cage, as he last remembers of himself, before that wretched dream.

No, he has simply traded one cage for another, and this one might be even worse.

He blinks awake, into total darkness, jumping to his feet, only to bang his head against a hard surface - a stone wall, he thinks - and lets out a colorful curse that he learned from Starkey aboard the pirate ship.

"Sit down. You'll only get yourself hurt," a voice snaps in the darkness, though it is hushed, as though the owner is afraid he might wake someone else.

And with good reason.

It is then that the memories come flooding back, and he winces, rubbing his sore forehead and blinking into the darkness in a feeble attempt to see.

It is dark; unbearably dark, and Baelfire has never liked darkness, not even before, when his papa had not taken on the name of the Darkness itself. His papa used to rock him and sing him back to sleep whenever he awoke from a 'mare during the night, leaving a candle that they couldn't afford burning beside his cot because they both knew Baelfire would never be able to sleep without it.

That, combined with the fact that Baelfire can hear the other boy's voice reverberating off of the very close walls, nearly sends him into a panic.

"Where are you?" he demands, as his eyes adjust to the inky blackness and he begins to see the outline of a child's body, not too far away. The boy doesn't answer, doesn't look as though he's even heard Baelfire.

Without a second's hesitation, Baelfire begins moving toward the other boy, though ducking his head as he does so to avoid hiting it on the ceiling.

The outline gets clearer as he moves closer, and Baelfire begins to realize that he is not completely blinded by the darkness, that a small trickle of light is seeping in through a crack in their prison, in the side of the wall.

It relieves him more than he can say, that little crack.

"Watch where you're going, you oaf," Adam snaps, as Bae slaps against someone's thigh. He takes a breath of relief, somehow wishing for no company after what happened with the pirate, but not wishing to be alone, either.

"Sorry," he mutters, sinking back down again. His back slams against the stone wall, and he grunts, but he has never been one to complain overmuch, and, even were he, he doubts this other boy would want to hear it.

The other boy snorts, and doesn't bother to respond.

The wall behind Baelfire is wet and hard against his back, the ground beneath equally so, soaking through his trousers, and he has a terrible feeling that the thing they are trapped inside was not made by human hands. That would almost be better.

The thing they are trapped in is small; too small. Baelfire has never done well with small spaces, not since he watched his papa turn their village baker into a cockroach for burning thier bread and place it inside a ceramic jar, only to die a week later when the jar was left outside and crushed by a travelling pilgrim.

He had nightmares about it for a month. His papa had never exacted that punishment again, for Baelfire's sake rather than because he'd realized it was wrong, but it was something Baelfire would never forget his papa was capable of, he is sure.

The ceiling is too short for them to stand in, as Baelfire has already artfully discovered, and he can see no sign of a trap door.

He thinks they might be underground, and the thought of their captors, the Lost Ones, or Boys, or whatever they call themselves, lowering him and Tom and Adam into some underground prison is rather terrifying.

"Where are we?" he asks, when the silence becomes too much and he realizes that the other boy is not going to be forthcoming on his own.

"I have no idea," Adam whispers back, tone colored with annoyance, though Baelfire isn't sure if it is directed at him or their captivity, and he doesn't want to check. "I woke up a couple minutes before you. They put us in...some sort of dungeon. Or a cave, near as I can tell."

Definitely a cave, then.

Baelfire can see reasonably well now, and he can just make out the outline of Tom, lying against the far wall, dead to the world. For a moment, Baelfire is afraid that the other boy truly is dead, but he bottles the emotion that comes with that thought away quickly after seeing Tom's leg twitch in the darkness.

Baelfire swallows hard. The words Felix spoke to him, promising that he 'got to live' come instantly to mind, and he can't help but wonder if the Lost Boys have some nefarious purpose for them.

He heard some of the things the other villagers thought his papa capable of. Sometimes, tiny children were purportedly needed for certain spells...or at least, parts of them were. He knows that, for all of his papa's shortcomings, he would never harm a child like that, but his papa is not the only sorcerer out there, and Baelfire doubts that this place is devoid of magic.

No, he knows they must have some purpose for their prisoners. He only wishes he knew exactly what that was before they return.

He remembers that Felix wants to kill whomever it is they are looking for, whomever it is Baelfire isn't. The fact that they are alive, and the captors of such murderers is...unsettling.

"What were you dreaming about?" Adam asks, not quite innocently. "You were...thrashing about and yelling something awful." He sounds almost amused by this, as if Baelfire's pain is the only source of entertainment he has.

Baelfire shakes his head, decides to ignore the question. "Have you...seen anyone? Since you woke up?"

Adam blinks at the change in subject, and finally just shrugs. "No one's come to see us, and Tom won't wake up."

A bit of fear bleeds into his voice then, and Bae realizes that Tom is very close to panicking, too. That he isn't used to these life or death situations, not that Bae has had much more experience himself, and that he had been putting up a front the night before, distrustful of Baelfire, because he is scared.

Scared, just as Baelfire is.

He supposes the other boy has very good reason to not trust him, just as Baelfire has found that he himself does to never trust anyone again.

If only he had learnt that lesson the first time, from his papa. It would, he thinks, have been kinder.

Still, he isn't entirely sure he's learned it fully, yet.

"Is there a door?" he asks then, startling Adam out of his fearful thoughts in an attempt to bring him back to the situation at hand.

It used to work with his papa...before. When he was still awoken from his nightmares of the Ogre Wars, and would sit at his wheel and spin for hours on end, barely listening when Baelfire attempted to pull him from it.

Distraction.

And Adam isn't the only one who needs a distraction, Baelfire thinks wryly, even as he shivers and wraps his arms more tightly around his knees.

"Wh-What?" the other boy demands, glancing at Bae as though he thinks the other boy is a bit batty, and then his face hardens into a scowl. "If there was a door, don't you think I'd have found it by now?"

Baelfire shrugs. He doesn't know anything about Adam; doesn't know what he should expect from the other boy to begin with.

Instead of answering, he moves forward, on his hands and knees as he already has a goose egg on the back of his head from the last time he attempted to stand. He slips across the floor, surmizing that it is made of stone, but with rather enough mud and something else he doesn't want to consider lining it; the source of the wetness he felt earlier.

He keeps moving, running his hands along the floor until they come to a stop, forced to when they encounter Tom. He crawls over the other boy, careful not to wake him, and continues his exploration up the wall until he finds another crack that turns off into a different direction; the cieling.

So. The cave they are in is even smaller than he expected, and does not extend very far.

"What are you doin'?" Adam demands, and his panic bleeds into his voice, making it louder. Tom groans at the sound, shifting in his sleep, and Bae breaths a sigh of relief when the boy doesn't wake, though he doesn't know why.

Perhaps it's simply because he doesn't want to face anyone else right now, after that dream.

Nightmares have always unsettled him, after all, and not in the usual way. Long after he dreams them and wakes up from them, they stay with him, lingering just at the back of his mind, and Baelfire isn't sure that he wants to be thinking of the dream he's just had.

"Looking for a way out," he mutters, because this is the surest way to shut the other boy up so that he can continue.

It turns out that it isn't. "Can't bloody well see anything, down here. You ain't gonna find nothin'. They put us down here."

Baelfire only grunts in response, not wanting to think too much about that fact. Darkness. He doesn't like the dark. Never has, even when it was only a pigment in the night sky, sent to keep him from a fearful sleep.

That has not been caused by his papa, but he can't help but wonder if having a papa known as the Dark One didn't encourage it.

"What...what do you think they're going to do to us?" Adam asks then, and it is clear in his voice that he is terrified of much more than spending a few nights in this pit.

Baelfire swallows hard, having just turned that thought of his mind and having no desire to go back over it.

"I...don't know," he whispers hoarsely, and it is as if a dam has been released behind his chest. He can feel the sobs, hanging just inside his chest, though they don't come up. Instead, he lifts a hand and swats at a single tear dripping down his cheek, wiping it away as quickly as he can.

Another comes, after that first one, and he wipes this one away as well, the cave they are trapped inside become gradually blurry as his eyes fill.

Still, he doesn't allow the tears to fall.

Baelfire can't remember the last time he actually cried; he thinks that it was when he realized his papa loved a dagger more than he, but he can't be sure, as Baelfire has never been a child for tears.

His papa always said that he was such a strong little boy, even before he knew he had to be strong, to be the man his papa wasn't, and Baelfire has always endeavoured to be such, not crying because he was thinking of a way out.

There isn't a way out, now.

Adam shifts awkwardly toward him, patting Baelfire's shoulder in empathy. And Baelfire lets the silent, shaking sobs that don't accompany any tears out instead, and it _hurts_.

If he could cry, rather than the few scant tears he lets out now, it would be first for his mama, long thought dead while she had been galavanting across the worlds with that pirate. For her again at the thought of his papa killing her, for, much as he doesn't wish to believe the pirate's words, that his papa had done it, and had been lying to him all this time, he knows his papa is capable of exactly that.

And then, he thinks, for his papa, abandoning him in a world that made no sense, only to be swept up into another, because he couldn't let go of his dagger.

He might cry for the life he might have had with the Darlings, a life that they hinted at, in school, with girls about to tease him and real food in his belly.

When the feeling of tears at the back of his vision finally stops, he almost feels better, though he isn't sure if this is from relief that they didn't fall, or from the release of the two he'd let out.

The feeling doesn't last very long, though, because he remembers that he is still trapped in a pit with two other boys, one of whom is unconscious and injured, and _He_ , whoever _He_ is, seems to have some nefarious purpose for them.

Adam's look is no longer quite as judging as it was, strangely enough, though he makes no move to comfort Baelfire. In fact, he thinks he sees Adam brushing away a few tears himself, though the other boy does not cry aloud as Baelfire did, and his cheeks instantly flush with the thought that the other boy is able to hold in such pain.

"You didn't choose to come here, did ya?" Adam asks then.

Baelfire glances up. "No. I...came here in the place of some people that I cared about."

Adam glances at him, something like respect shimmering at the back of his eyes. "Why? Didn't they want to go anymore?" he glances at Tom as he says it, and Baelfire blinks, getting the distinct impression that he and Adam may be similar in more than just their wariness of others.

He shakes his head. "No, it wasn't that. I just...I knew that something awful would happen to whomever came here, and I couldn't let that happen to them. They were my...family."

He thinks of his papa, and how he let Baelfire fall down into the portal, alone.

Adam, surprisingly, nods, though he's no longer looking at Baelfire. Instead, his gaze is locked on Adam. "He's my brother," he says finally. "The...that Shadow thing has been coming to visit him for weeks now, telling tales of this place. I didn't know about it until a few nights ago. We live in an orphanage, see, and Tom's...well, Tom's always coming up with fantasies, stories of a better life. I couldn't let him go without me."

Baelfire nods, understanding. Wishing that his papa was as brave as Adam had been with Tom.

For a while, neither of them says anything, lost in their own thoughts.

"Why ya think they threw us down here when we were in a perfectly good cage before?" Adam asks presently, and Baelfire jerks his head up, the tears already starting to dry on his cheeks.

It comes to him to wonder why this is Adam's question, and why it seems so important to the other boy. After all, he couldn't care less why they've been moved from one prison to another, though he does admit it is rather strange that anyone would have bothered, and especially while all three boys were asleep.

Baelfire moves back to his old place, across from Adam, and bites down the wave of nauseous terror that assaults him in that moment.

Perhaps _He_ will kill them now that the boys are of no used to Him, and Baelfire will finally know whom it is that Hook's men all seem terrified of.

He shrugs in answer, not wanting to give voice to said theory, and Adam frowns at him again, as if the tentative alliance they've reached is in danger of unravelling, and

Baelfire isn't given long to brood on his newest predicament, however, because then Tom lets out a pained moan, his eyes snapping open as he glances around in absolute confusion before they narrow on Baelfire and Tom gulps.

He mutters a soft curse that Baelfire heard several times around the pirate ship but never from his papa, and then sits up a little, wincing as he does so.

"I thought it was all a dream," he murmurs, still looking rather dazed. "I thought..."

Just as Baelfire is opening his mouth to give Tom some sort of reassurance, blinding light seeps in through the ceiling of their prison, and both boys squint, lifting their hands in a feeble attempt to shield their eyes.

The light shrieks into their little prison, and Baelfire sees that it is indeed a cave, designed to ensnare prey, he thinks, not hold in prisoners. It is small, too small for all of them, as he originally thought, and damp, which means that they are close to the sea.

If he'd had some light, before, he might have even managed to free himself.

Adam lets out a cry at the sudden change in their condition, or perhaps it is the fact that no one appears to let them out from behind this light, jumping to his feet and looking as if he is about to go into a full blown attack of nerves. Baelfire doesn't have any time to reassure him before he does so, letting out a scream and punching at the air.

Tom comes awake fully from the screams and lets out another feeble moan before stumbling to a standing position.

His moans have no other effect than to subdue Adam, somewhat, for the other boy glances at Tom in surprise, and then falls silent. His expression however, is still as filled with fear as it was moments ago.

Baelfire wonders, idly, if Tom and Adam knew each other, before, of if they had only just met in the cage, a little before Baelfire joined them.

And wonders, then, why it is that they were both kept in the cage for so long, if they were taken by the Shadow around the same time that Baelfire was.

Then a rope is thrown down, and Bae wastes no time, thinking only of getting out of this cave as quickly as he can, but some part of him knowing that Tom must be helped out first, injured as he is.

He sighs, moving over to the wounded boy and tying the length of rope securely around his waist. Tom blinks in surprise, glancing down at the rope first and then at Baelfire before giving him a hesitant smile.

Baelfire doesn't bother to return it; uncertain that he can manage one convincing enough to the other boy.

And then the rope is being tugged on from above them, and Tom goes flying through the air, barely able to cradle his wounded arm to his chest before it might have slammed into the stone walls.

A moment later, he is gone, and the rope returns.

Baelfire is the last to leave the cave, and he is almost hesitant to do so, given his theory that they're all about to be killed since they aren't the right boys. Something about the close walls of the cave, the darkness where he can't see any danger, is oddly comforting.

When he reaches the top, two large boys grab him, and Baelfire glances at them, wondering if He only employs children, wondering why, if that's the case, Hook seems so terrified of him.

But he can barely focus on this thought, squinting at the harsh sunlight bleeding in through the treetops, nearly blinding him. The boys push him away from the cave, and Baelfire blinks several times to alleviate the sting of brilliant light before his eyes slowly grow accustomed to it.

Tom and Adam are pushed off to the side, held by other boys, though they aren't tired up, and Baelfire feels a bit of relief at that, for it means surely that they aren't meant to be killed, or they would be fighting back.

They are standing in the middle of a clearing in the Neverforest, as Hook and his men called it, the woods around them dark and foreboding, the ground squishy beneath Baelfire's feet after the cave, surrounded by their captors.

Then the boy from (the night before? Two nights ago? He can't be sure, after all), comes forward. Felix, Baelfire believes his name is, though he doesn't know quite how he knows this, and gives the newest prisoners a leering grin.

"Welcome home, boys," he says.

Baelfire blinks at him, a dozen questions on his tongue. If this is home, why were they locked away in a cave? Who is _He_ , and what does he want with them, if none of his newly aquired hostages is the right one?

But before he can give voice to any of these questions, Tom lets out another moan of pain and falls to the ground, cradling his arm with the other and waving off the boys who move forward to help him.

Baelfire moves forward protectively, not even understanding why he does so, because he knows before it happens that someone will drag him back.

One of the Lost Ones, as Hook calls them, does so, holding him under the arms so that he can't move to help Tom, and Adam looks so terrified of the other boys that he does nothing, just stands there with his hands limp by his sides as Tom convulses in pain on the ground.

And then Felix is moving forward, tearing a leaf off of the nearest tree with utter unconcern, and bending down next to Tom. His expression is almost gentle as he peels Tom's wounded arm away from his side, and Baelfire blinks at that, unaccustomed to seeing any other expression save for threatening malice and smugness on the older boy's face that he isn't quite sure what to make of this new development.

Felix pushes up Tom's sleeve, ignoring the intake of breath from the boy as it pulls at his skin, sticky with blood, and then he is pressing the leaf against Tom's skin.

Baelfire wonders what the hell this is supposed to accomplish - after all, even his papa would need an incantation to make some sort of healing spell work, and if this isn't magic, then he thinks they need some sort of paste as well - when Tom lets another gasp.

Only this one isn't from pain; Baelfire can see the look of relief and shock on his face, as he stares down at his arm, and Felix pulls away the leaf, tossing it to the ground.

The wound, though it was not so terrible to begin with, only very bloody, begins to sew itself back up, into the skin, and when it's done, the blood vanishes slowly, curling in on itself before dissolving, and Tom's pale arm is held out in the daylight, looking as if it was never wounded to begin with.

"Whoa..." Tom whispers, glancing up at Adam and Baelfire as if expecting the same reactions from them. Adam's jaw has dropped to his chest, but there is still that look in his eyes, the one of suspicion as he glances from the discarded leaf to the wound once more.

"How...?"

Baelfire supposes that, if this is the first time they've ever seen magic, their reactions should be expected. Oh, they've heard of magic from the Shadow; it's why they agreed to come to Neverland, he thinks, just like Wendy. But they've never really experienced it.

He wonders if he felt that same thrill of awe the first time he saw a magic trick that was very real.

Somehow, he doesn't think it was awe that he felt.

One of the Lost Boys, much younger than Felix, grins. "Magic," he says, throwing his arms out dramatically and gesturing to the entire Island, Baelfire imagines.

Hook never mentioned magic on the Island, beyond the obvious, becomes he seemed to understand that the thought of magic upset Baelfire. And if he knew it was there, as he must, considering how long he has been in Neverland, and trading with the Lost Ones and Indians alike, Baelfire feels the sting of betrayal all the worse, that Hook would abandon him to a place filled with such magic, knowing how it scared him so.

He wonders if _He_ , this man or creature that Hook seems so terrified of, is this world's equal to the Dark One. Wonders if that's why Hook and his crew fear _Him_ so.

Wonders if that means Baelfire should fear _Him_ , as well.

Felix smirks at the look on Baelfire's face, interpreting it wrongly. "Everything on the Island is full of magic just like this," he explains to the newcomers, "So you needn't worry about things like getting hurt or falling out of a tree." Then he jumps to his feet, nimble as a cat. "Come on, and we'll show you where you live, now. We haven't got much time, though."

"Wait a moment," Adam speaks up from next to him, before Baelfire himself can do so. "You've been keeping us locked up in a cage for days now, and suddenly you want to be friends?"

Adam, Baelfire is relieved to see, is sufficiently wary now, even if there is something a little too awestruck in his eyes, something mirrored in Tom's, at the sight of a magic leaf healing an injury.

Sometimes, Baelfire forgets that the Darlings are from a world without magic, and that Wendy was so entranced by the thought of magic at first, because she didn't know what it was truly capable of.

Felix shrugs. "Not my orders," is what it sounds like he mutters under his breath, though Baelfire can't be sure.

Tom and Adam are from that same world.

"Why did you have us shut away like that?" Adam demands, and Baelfire blinks owlishly at him, wondering why this is his first concern and, after thinking about it, wondering why it is not his.

Felix shrugs. "We don't mean you any harm, now," he says mysteriously, and then he and the other boys start herding them toward the edge of the clearing, looking at them expectantly. "So long as you don't mean us any."

Tom is the first to move, following them in the much the way that Baelfire thinks of a sheep, going to his slaughter, a large smile on his face as he glances from them to his healed hand every few seconds.

His explanation makes no sense, however, and Baelfire is very tempted not to move at all.

"What do you mean, now?" Baelfire blurts out then, and this alone stops the boys.

Felix turns around, and Baelfire wonders where _He_ is, that he lets Felix be his spokesperson. _He_ doesn't seem so terrifying, hiding behind Felix, even if this boy is rather frightening.

"Why, you're Lost Boys now. We wouldn't want anything bad to happen to one of our own."


	3. Dark Waters

_"But where do you live mostly now?"_  
 _With the lost boys."_  
 _Who are they?"_  
 _They are the children who fall out of their perambulators when the nurse is looking the other way. If they are not claimed in seven days they are sent far away to the Neverland to defray expanses."_  
-Peter Pan

There is no explanation for why the boys were trapped in a cave like they were, no reasoning behind it, nothing but the smiles of the Lost Boys are they pull their captives into the woods like old friends, all chattering happily and introducing themselves so quickly that Baelfire doesn't have a prayer of remembering their names, before skipping off into the distance.

He knows he shouldn't trust them, after being locked away like that, after witnessing the fear Hook has of them, after learning that he really shouldn't trust anyone, and yet, an old line his papa used to whisper comes to mind, " _The enemy of my enemy is my friend_ ," and, to his own surprise, he finds himself wanting to.

"Well, come on then," Felix calls back to them, a fake cheerfullness in his tone as his eyes light on Baelfire. He doesn't seem very happy to see the other boy at all, and Baelfire wonders if this is because he spent so long hiding with the pirates, or if there is some other reason.

"We're almost there."

They've been walking for some time; Baelfire, for the life of him, is unable to say how long, but, by the look of exhaustion on Tom's face, it is somewhere near forever.

The Lost Boys don't seem tired, at all; in fact, they're jumping around, running and skipping like much younger children during this journey, occassionally the younger ones getting so far ahead that they have to circle back to see what's taking their newest recruits so long.

It is the fact that Felix stays almost glued between Adam and Tom that lets Baelfire know he, Tom, and Adam are not merely new Lost Boys; Felix is trying to hide it, but Baelfire can tell he's worried they're going to run away.

And, of course, Baelfire is thinking of doing just that; he's been watching the woods as they travel slowly through it, down several well-beaten paths that seem to lead nowhere, before abruptly turning in a circle.

He thinks it's safe to say he's been sufficiently lost since they left the cave, and perhaps even before then. He doubts he could find his way back to the cave, much less the beach, from here.

And besides, after that, where would he go?

He's aware, several times during their journey, of Felix's eyes on him, doubly aware of the sword hanging from Felix's waist and the threat he'd given Hook once, while Baelfire was hiding beneath the floor, and so he keeps walking, pretending he's given up the fight, for now.

Riiiip.

There are very few things in life that scare Baelfire; he has spent the last several years as the son of the Dark One, and has seen more than his share of scary things, but the thought of having his soul ripped from his body is rather terrifying, especially after Starkey, one of the men aboard Hook's ship, had explained exactly what that entailed.

Apparently, Felix's threat was not the first time that the pirates had heard of such a thing.

Beside him, Tom is staring around in awe, and it strikes Baelfire to wonder whether the other boy has ever seen so many trees; he's used to them, from the other world, the one before the Darlings, but he can't recall seeing any in London.

"What's your name?" a voice pierces through the catcalls and crows of the other Lost Boys, some of them having taken to the trees, jumping from vine to vine and branch to branch as if they haven't a care of falling and cracking their skulls open.

Then again, if the tree leaves can be used to heal injuries, Baelfire supposes there isn't all that much to worry about.

It takes him a moment to realize that the voice is coming from just below and to the side of him, and Baelfire glances down to see a little boy, one hand wrapped protectively around a stuffed bear, the other pressed into a fist, thumb reaching towards his lips once more.

"Baelfire," he says automatically, wondering where the child came from, for he wasn't walking beside Baelfire a moment ago.

At least, Baelfire didn't think he was.

The boy grins around the thumb in his mouth. "Pags," he introduces himself, and then points to the stuffed bear. "And this is Pags, too."

Despite himself, Baelfire smiles.

Pags is a cute little boy, a little older than Micheal but a little younger than John, with sloppy blond hair and eyes too serious for a boy of his age. He reminds Baelfire a great deal of Micheal, and this is not just because of the little bear he's holding onto like a lifeline.

"Nice to meet you," he says, and Pags busts into laughter.

Baelfire blinks at him. "What?" he asks, but this only causes Pags to laugh harder, doubling over and holding the hand that was in his mouth to his stomach, as though he can barely contain himself.

"You're very strange, Baelfire," Pags says finally, straightening and trying to put on a serious face. Then he turns and skips away, into the darkness of the woods ahead of them.

Baelfire glances at Felix, and the larger boy just shrugs. "We're here," he says, without preamble, and Baelfire glances around.

This is home, Felix had told them. This would be their new home, as Lost Boys now.

It doesn't look any different to Baelfire than any other part of the woods they've been walking through, nothing significant about it that would cause Baelfire to think of the word home, though there is a small clearing where most of the Lost Boys are already sitting or lounging against the trees.

There are the marks of what used to be a fire at the middle of the group, a few sticks charred by flame, a couple of bones (the sight of them makes Baelfire shudder), but, beyond that, it is just a little clearing, with no signs of life.

He remembers the Darlings' home, how the large nursery where the children slept was always messy, despite Nana and Mother's attempts to keep it neat and tidy, how each child had their own bed strewn with toys or, in Wendy's case, story books. How it even seemed to smell of home; the smell of hot cinnamon filling the air, or of crisp pages in a book as Wendy read a story, later to tell it to her brothers before they slept.

That was home.

Tom and Adam seem to share his opinion, or, at least, Adam does, glancing around in disdain before muttering, "this is it?"

Felix shoots him an annoyed look, and is just about to answer when one of the other Lost Boys, a child with fiery red hair and blue eyes, shoots to his feet.

"Can we go now?" he asks, sounding so much like a child whining to their mother that Baelfire almost smiles.

Felix hesitates for a moment, before turning back to Baelfire and the other two new recruits. "This is home," he says abruptly. "You don't have to worry about being home at a certain time, like with the adults. Or obeying any rules, here, except staying with the Lost Boys. If you ever get lost, just come back here. Someone'll probably be here."

"Probably?" Tom asks, sounding rather worried.

Felix just smirks, turning back to his Lost Boys. "Ready?" he asks, and it mmight just be Baelfire's imagination, but he thinks that the boys are all practically jumping up and down with their excitement.

"Ready for what?" Tom whispers, but this time, no one answers him before the boys are all running in opposite directions.

All, that is, but a few, one of whom is the little boy who introduced himself as Pags. He runs forward, grabbing Baelfire's hand and tugging him in the direction of a random tree, as far as Baelfire can tell.

He laughs a little, surprisingly nervous, though he can't really say why. "What are we doing?" he asks, even as Pags continues to tug him into the woods. He glances back at Tom and Adam, in the clearing, but they are already gone.

The moment they get off the beaten trail, the woods seem to darken, a coldness descending on them that Pags doesn't seem to feel, his face light and smiling as he continues to drag Baelfire along like a doll, grinning as his pace gets faster and faster.

It strikes Baelfire then that he's alone; he could escape, if he wanted to, with ease. Pags is tiny and wouldn't be able to hold him back, and he could be far away from these strange boys soon enough.

"Hurry up, or we'll miss it," he complains, and Baelfire forces himself to speed up.

He doesn't know, after all, any way off of this Island, and, if what the Pirate said was true, there isn't a way off of it. And, besides locking him in a cage, the Lost Boys don't seem to mean any real harm, now.

Something at the back of his mind tells him that this isn't the case at all, but Baelfire pushes the thought away quickly. Some part of him doesn't want to upset Pags, must be.

He almost labels this as cowardice, and that almost spurs him into action.

"We have to find it, Baelfire. I know we can, now," it takes him a moment to realize that Pags is chattering along, and he's missed half of whatever it is the younger boy is saying.

"Find what?" he asks, deciding to play along for now.

Pags gives him an incredulous look. "Why, the treasure, of course!" As if Baelfire should have realized this. "This is a treasure hunt, you know."

"It is?" he sounds rather foolish after saying it, but Baelfire can't help blink in confusion. Tom, he, and Adam were kept in a cage for days, and now the Lost Boys want to go on a treasure hunt.

He isn't sure that anything makes sense, anymore.

"Where are all the other boys?" he asks suddenly, and Pags careens to a halt, almost causing Baelfire to run into him, before turning around and giving Baelfire a slow smile.

"They've all gone looking, too," he says. "We have to find it first, though! It's important. Whoever finds it first is King of the Moment until the next treasure hunt."

"But why are we going on a treasure hunt?" Baelfire thinks to ask, even as Pags starts running again, his little chest heaving with each step.

Pags shrugs. "Why not? Pan's gone, so he's left us a treasure to find. He always does that sort of thing, when he goes."

"Pan?" Baelfire echoes, the name sounding strangely familiar, though he cannot put his finger on why.

They are running at a more leisurely pace now, Pags seeming to be slowed down by the great distance they've already gone, and Baelfire is glad, for he's more able to keep up, now.

He's always been a fit boy; he likes to play outdoors, even if there's never anyone to play with son of the Dark One, but this entirely different. Pags, despite his rather plump frame, and the other Lost Boys, from what Baelfire saw of them before they all ran off in seperate directions, seem to have the endurance of someone who's been running for a lifetime, and Pags, despite his shallow breathing, has yet to break out into a sweat.

He can hear Pags grin now, even if the other boy is faced away from him. "Yeah, Pan. Peter Pan. He's our Captain," he says, sounding rather proud.

Their Captain...

"Like Hook?" he asks, and immediately regrets saying the pirate's name when the little boy in front of him drops his hand as though burned, and rears back, turning to stare at Baelfire.

"You know the Hook?" the little boy asks, such disdain in his voice that Baelfire almost flinches, as he's never heard such hatred from such a small little boy before.

He nods, hesitantly.

Pags makes a face. "Oh. Are you...friends with him?" he asks, his face barely concealing his disgust at such a possibility, and Baelfire's eyes widen.

"No, no I'm not." He hesitates another moment, and then, "I hate him."

Pags stares at him a moment, as if investigating the truth of this statement, eyes clouded with confusion, before his face breaks out into a grin. "Well," he says, taking Baelfire's arm again, "Come on, we have to go and find that treasure. I've only been King of the Moment once before, and it only lasts until Pan gets back."

And then he's dragging Baelfire through the woods again, but this doesn't last for long. A few minutes later, it is Pags pulling Baelfire back, as he nearly careens out of the woods and over a cliff.

Baelfire sucks in a deep breath. "That was close," he whispers, when he's finally able to form words after that, and Pags laughs.

"Come on, this way," the little boy says, and Baelfire follows him, a pace or two behind, before they stop at the foot of the cliff, a little further down, now, and it is now that Baelfire sees a ragged staircase made of stone, leading down to the bottom of the cliff, where stone met the sea.

Pags starts running down the steps with unabashed abandon, not mindful of the loose rocks beneath his feet, or the edge he is so close to, not even looking back, now, to see if Baelfire is following.

For a moment, Baelfire is almost tempted not to follow. After all, there are no other Lost Boys around to tell him to stay, or to keep him there by force, or to lock him up in a cage again.

But he wants to know what it is that makes Pags so excited, whatever it is their chasing after, and besides, he reminds himself, where would he go?

The pirate ship had sailed around the Island, Neverland, and Baelfire hadn't seen signs of it being overlarge, nor overpopulated.

And if Hook wasn't lying, there really isn't anywhere else to go. He supposes he can play along for now, until he does find a way home.

Because, even if Hook wasn't lying, Baelfire is going to find a way home.

With that thought in mind, he follows after Pags, a little more carefully than the stumbling boy below, taking the steps two at a time rather than three and mindful of the very close, unguarded edge.

The beach is not like the beach the Lost Boys brought him to, before. This one is rocky and sandless, but for a few bits of muddy dirt here and there, all of the way out to the water. It's ugly, barren and sharp, while the other held sand white as snow, trees not dwarfed by tall stone walls. It's colder here, too, and Baelfire wonders at that, even as he pulls his ragged sleeves tighter around himself and suppresses a shiver.

Pags glances back at him. "You all right?" he asks sweetly, and Baelfire forces himself to nod.

"What makes you think that the...treasure is here?" he enquires, not wanting to disappoint the younger boy, but not wanting to stay here any longer than he had to.

Pags shrugs. "We'll find it eventually," he says cryptically, but Baelfire notices that he's walking now, rather than running.

They find the way that Pags seems to be looking for, after a while, in a small cave at the edge of the beach, and Pags drags him towards it, disappearing inside without looking back.

Baelfire pauses just at the entrance, staring at the dark abyss before him and swallowing hard.

He glances back, the way the two of them have come. It would be easy enough, to retrace their steps, and perhaps there is a way off of this Island that even Hook doesn't know about.

If there is, he has to find it.

There's always another way, after all.

He starts moving backward, silently, hoping that Pags is just as unable to see him as he is to see the little boy, until he's nearly hit the steps that they just came down.

And that's when he sees it, sitting tall and proud in the water, not a hundred paces away.

The _Jolly Roger_.

Baelfire freezes, wonders if Hook can see him all the way from there, if he even knows Baelfire is so close, if he does, will he come for him...

And then reminds himself that he doesn't care. He chose to leave, after all, even if he didn't get a choice in where he was going.

The only way off of this Island is aboard a ship, according to Hook. He's not going to take it. Even if that means he can never return to the Darlings.

Baelfire heaves a sigh, following Pags into the dark interior of the cave, never noticing the older boy standing just a few paces behind him on one of the nearby rocks, arms crossed, a thoughtful expression on his face.

As Baelfire vanishes into the cave, the boy smiles grimly, then lifts off of the ground and into the air effortlessly.

Baelfire glances back a moment later, the wind on the back of his neck startling, but there is nothing there.

"Baelfire?" Pags is suddenly in front of him when he turns back around, frowning.

"Yeah?" his voice sounds hoarse, as if he hasn't used it in a long time, although Baelfire cannot imagine why this is.

"It's probably not this way," Pags sounds almost apologetic. "Let's turn around and go through another cave."

Baelfire groans. He is tempted to ask whether it has to be another cave, but then he remembers the Jolly Roger, banked not so far away.

"All right," he says, and this time it is Pags who is following him, out of the cave and into the open sea air once more.

Pags wrinkles his nose. "I hate that smell," he mutters, and Baelfire blinks.

"What smell?"

It is only then that the stench hits him, and he reels back in disgust as a waft of air seems to surround the two boys, almost green, he can't help but think.

"Codfish," Pags murmurs, chubby finger pointing toward the edge of the beach, where water meets rock.

Sure enough, dozens of dead codfish lay out on the rocks, bodies bleached by the sun as if they have been there for ages.

Baelfire's eyes widen. He could have sworn that, a moment ago, there was nothing there-

"Come on, Bae," Pags is pulling on his sleeve now, dragging him back toward the stone wall, and Baelfire has no choice but to follow, but not without muttering mutinously under his breath, "It's Baelfire."

Pags nods, not turning around. "Baelfire," he repeats, voice almost song-like. "Why don't you like nicknames?"

He stops then, turning around to face Baelfire as if this is one of the most important questions in the worlds, and he has to know the answer before they can continue on with this oh-so-important treasure hunt.

Baelsire just stares at him. "Ah...someone else used to call me that," he says simply, and Pags digests this for a moment before nodding.

"Don't worry, Baelfire. You'll forget about them," Pags says reassuringly, or, at least, Baelfire supposes he means to sound reassuring.

He doesn't, not really.

Baelfire is just about to ask what that means - you'll forget about them - but then Pags is pulling him inside another cave, pitch black so that Baelfire has to hold one hand against the wall of the cave as he inches through it, not wanting to fall, as the ground beneath his feet is soggy and he fears he might just sink into it.

Pags chatters on, oblivious to Baelfire's rapidly decreasing mood, as they go through the other end of this cave, coming out in the middle of the Neverforest, as Pags calls it, once again.

"This way," Pags says decisively, and Baelfire follows after realizing he wouldn't be able to find his way through this part of the forest alone, anyway.

Baelfire is no longer in the talking mood anymore, but Pags manages to keep up the conversation for the both of them. He tells Baelfire about the Island, about the many adventures he's had since arriving here, and of the other Lost Boys, the ones he's friends with and the ones to avoid.

Baelfire notices that Pags doesn't once mention Felix, or _Him_ , as either of those. He doesn't ask why not.

He has a pretty good idea of what the answer will be, in any case.

He doesn't know how long they keep walking, briefly wonders if Felix or one of the other boys is going to come looking for them, or if everyone is as lost, trying to find the treasure.

Neverland is a large Island, but not so large; Baelfire has circled it several times aboard the Jolly Roger, and so he knows that it is not very large at all.

But Pags doesn't look lost; he's chewing on his lower lip indecisively, but his eyes lighten every time he notices something familiar. Perhaps this is all part of the game.

Suddenly, they are on the beach again, the same beach they've only just left, or perhaps that was a long time ago, and the rotten smell of dead fish assaults Baelfire's nose. He reels back, but the stench doesn't seem to bother Pags this time, and the other boy keeps walking, with a purpose now.

They do not enter the same cave they went through the first time, but rather, Pags starts walking into the water, submerging himself up to his waist before glancing back at Baelfire, brows lifted.

Baelfire takes a hesitant step into the water; unlike all of the other times he remembers entering it (the first few being to jump off the Jolly Roger to swim in it, the only other time when the Lost Boys shoved him about of the little dinghy), the water is warm to the touch, and he smiles, almost wanting to sit down in it.

He could get lost in this water; there was a small stream back in the village he lived at with his papa, and Baelfire had always enjoyed swimming in it when he was younger. His papa, however, would hover by in terror, afraid that Baelfire would fall in and drown himself in the current.

While he lived with his family, the Darlings, he, John, and Wendy would sometimes sneak down to the harbor while Mr. and Mrs. Darling were away at a dinner party and Nana was busy watching Micheal.

It was great fun, for they also had to sneak past the many sailors and pedestrians to hide under the docks for an hour or two, lest anyone find them and drag them back to the Darlings' home.

It was Wendy's idea to do so, and he was glad that she had been able to talk the two oldest boys into it, for it was now one of his fondest memories of the Darling home.

Wendy and he taught John how to swim there, beneath the docks, where the water was murky enough that an adult might be concerned, but where the Darling children and Baelfire couldn't bring themselves to care. They would splash away for several hours before grabbing up the blankets they left strewn on the beach, and scurrying home in the shadows.

Mr. and Mrs. Darling had only caught them once, Mr. Darling amused while Mrs. Darling was concerned enough not to be, but hadn't reprimanded them never to go again, and so they had.

This water reminds Baelfire more of that time beneath the docks than the river from his papa's village, for while that was frigid, these two are far warmer. He has a friend here, in Pags, or something like a friend, to be in the water with him, too, and so it is very different from that village stream after all.

He swipes a hand through the water, marvelling as that hand causes ripples after it, and several small fish swim past him.

But Pags keeps moving, wading through the water until he abruptly turns right and beckons Baelfire to follow him.

It isn't long before the vague outline of a cave meets the horizon, and Baelfire blinks as it almost blocks out the sun entirely.

It is clear, as Pags continues towards it, that he recognizes the place and that, more than that, this is where he intends to go, and Baelfire just sighs as he follows the younger boy, the water, now around his waist, suddenly cold.

When they enter the cave, the water abruptly vanishes, Baelfire's clothes still soaked and dripping as he crawls up onto a rock and pants.

Pags sits beside him, giggling, and Baelfire finally gives the younger boy his attention. "What?"

Pags grins at him.

Baelfire glances around, surprised to note that the inside of the cave looks very familiar, as do the several dozen Lost Boys standing at the middle of the cave, visible despite the darkness, some of them having noticed the new arrivals, but most of them marvelling in the glittering treasure they've found.

"But we were already here," Baelfire says incredulously, recognizing this to be the second cave he and Pags had happened across earlier. "And you said it wasn't there."

Pags shrugs. "It's always at one of the caves," he says, unapologetically, "We just didn't want to find it yet, so we didn't see it when we were here."

Baelfire blinks at him, slightly exasperated. His legs feel like jelly, from all of the walking, and yet Pags doesn't seem tired at all. "Then why didn't we stay there?"

Again, Pags only shrugs. "Wouldn't'a been as fun," he explains, and then he is rushing off to be with the other Lost Boys, who are crowing excitedly as they pass the shimmering jewels back and forth.

Baelfire stands from his seat on the rocks, glances at the treasure, at the elation on the boys' faces as they practically roll in it, such is their excitement at having found it.

It reminds him of Wendy's and John's faces as they hid beneath the docks, submerged up to their necks in dark water.

Even Pags is happily clapping his hands together now, his bear tucked easily in the crook of his left elbow, though they are one of the last to find this treasure. He, like the other boys, doesn't seem to care who was first, only that the treasure has finally been found and split amongst them.

"Why not join the fun?" Felix is suddenly at his shoulder, staring down at him with an unreadable expression, though, if Baelfire had to hazard a guess, he would say it was anything but friendly. The other boy almost seems to...resent his presence, though Baelfire has no idea why. "You helped find it, after all."

Baelfire swallows hard, not sure what it is about this Lost Boy that unsettles him so much more than all of the rest. Perhaps it is merely that he was the one to lead the hunt for Baelfire, while he was with the pirates, or perhaps it is something more.

"I-"

"Baelfire!" Pags shouts from the group of boys, all entangled limbs. There's a crown around his neck, as it is too large to fit on his head, and a beaded necklace over one arm. "Come on."

"Yes, Baelfire. Go on," Felix says, and Baelfire sends him a wary glance. He has a strange feeling that Felix doesn't like him, that he's only tolerating Baelfire where the rest of the boys are new friends.

"Why did you have us locked up? What is it you want from us?" He has to know, before he keeps pretending with this game they're playing.

Felix just blinks at him. "Those were _His_ orders, not mine," he says finally, and Baelfire shivers, reminded of how much the pirates feared _Him_ , and wondering if he still should. "It doesn't usually happen, but...And I don't give orders. And we don't want anything from you. You're one of us now, Baelfire, and we'll help you until you're a Lost Boy."

"I'm not a Lost Boy yet?" Baelfire asks incredulously. "I thought, when you kidnapped us, you inducted us into your group," and his words are only slightly mocking.

Felix rolls his eyes. "Do you feel Lost, Baelfire?" he asks. Before Baelfire can think up an answer to that strange question, Felix moves toward the treasure and the other boys, picking up a golden coin and throwing it into the air.

It disappears before it can hit Felix's hand again.

Baelfire moves forward, to join them, even if he's harboed a slight aversion to anything golden for some time now, when one of the boys jumps to his feet, nearly knocking Baelfire over as he turns on another Lost Boy.

Baelfire thinks they introduced themselves, earlier, as Curly and Deni, but he can't be sure, given that he was not completely attentive at the time.

"I was here first," Curly says, glaring at the other boy, and Baelfire marvels at how fast his countenance has changed, in the few minutes between staring at the gold and turning on his fellow Lost Boy. "I'm King of the Moment. Hand it over." He holds out his hand expectantly, and that's when Baelfire sees the glistening sword in Deni's hands.

Deni's fists curl around the sword protectively, and Baelfire winces as he sees a small amount of blood trickle out from beneath them, even as the boy adamantly shakes his head. "I found the sword first. It's mine!"

They both turn to Felix then, as if he has some magical way to end this argument, and Felix shrugs, smirking at all the other Lost Boys.

"It looks like you'll have to fight for it, Curly," he says patronizingly, and the other boys begin chanting.

"Fight, fight, fight," even Tom has joined in, Baelfire notices with some apprehension, though Adam still looks bored and impatient of everything, arms crossed as he observes the Lost Boys, as though trying to figure out just what their game is.

Baelfire thinks he may have an ally in getting out of Neverland.

Curly growls, before reaching down and pulling another sword - this one slightly smaller, and sharp at only one end - out of the pile of gold, where Baelfire did not see it before. He brandishes it like someone who has always known how to use a sword, and spins on Deni.

When Baelfire was younger, he used to watch the other boys of his village play sword with wooden sticks, pretending to be valiant knights fighting each other off, and, when one hit the other with the stick, the "wounded" boy would fall to the ground, pretending to be dead.

He remembers wanting to join in so badly, wanting to be able to play with the other boys in his village, even if it was only to hit each other with sticks, because it would mean that he belonged.

He used to play with them. Before. They used to be his friends, going on many valiant adventures against dragons and evil knights to save beautiful princesses. There was only one girl their age in the village, and so Morraine would always play the part of the beautiful princess, even if most of the boys were too young to find her anything but vaguely pretty.

That all changed when his papa became the Dark One. He can remember the exact day it happened, remember the exact day that his friends turned their backs on him and pretended that he wasn't there, continuing on with their game, even as he called out to them.

It was the day after his papa had killed one of the villagers for finding out about the dagger.

This play-fight doesn't seem anything like the fights he remembers participating in, and then watching from a distance, back home.

For starters, Curly and Deni are using real swords, and Baelfire doesn't think any of the boys in his village had ever seen a real sword, before they were forced into the Ogre Wars, much less fought with one, even then. He knwos that most of the boys of the village were used to dig trenches rather than fight; the sacrifices on the Front, as the army couldn't afford to sacrifice able men with training when children were at hand.

And...this fight doesn't seem much like a game, at least not after Curly's blade slams into Deni's cheekbone, nearly shattering it, blood flying out of his lips as he falls to the ground, the sword he so covetously wanted slipping from his fingers.

The boys cheer, even as Deni's eyes fill with unshed tears and he lets out a whimper of pain.

Baelfire takes a slight step forward, knowing that someone needs to look at that cut if Deni has a hope of it not scarring, but Felix just rolls his eyes, waving Baelfire back and stalking forward to deal with it himself.

Baelfire notices another of those healing leafs in his hand, and relaxes, though only a little.

Deni snatches the leaf out of Felix's hand without so much as a thank-you, pressing it against his bloody face for only a few seconds before the pain appears to dissolve, and he tosses the leaf aside, jumping to his feet.

The gash in his cheek is completely gone, by then.

Baelfire doesn't know why this surprises him as much as it does; he has already witnessed this with Tom, and a thousand times over with his papa, much as he usually protested to the use of his papa's magic for healing, but it does, as it always has.

Perhaps it is that he cannot imagine magic being used for such a thing, when he has seen the other great evils it usually for, that always surprises him.

He doesn't have long to dwell on this, however.

Curly bends down, picking up the double-edged sword and raising it above his head. It has a golden hilt, which he wraps his meaty fist around before yelling, "I'm King of the Moment!"

The other boys cheer, all bowing at the waist and giggling while Curly runs around with the sword in his hand, even Deni and Felix appearing genuinely happy for him.

Tom grins, and, a beat after the other boys, bows as well, before dancing around their 'King' with reckless abandon.

Adam blinks in confusion, glancing over at Baelfire, and they share a short, worried look before Pags is suddenly in front of Baelfire again, grabbing his hand and pulling him toward the pile of gold.

With Felix's ever-watchful eyes on him, he can do nothing but follow.


	4. The Greatest Game

_"Alone is what I have. Alone protects me."_

-BBC Sherlock

At first, Baelfire is afraid that he and the other new boys will be made part of Pan's strange army, the creeping soldiers who skulk about in the night, doing Pan's orders, wherever he is to give them, perhaps going to threaten or trade with the pirates again.

He doesn't think that is likely, given that they spent the day before hunting for treasure, but Felix was there then, and Felix, he can tell, is close to _Him_. The other boys seem alternately afraid of and envious of the older boy.

(Baelfire cannot think of something more horrifying than facing Ho-the Pirate again.)

But he is relieved when Pags tells him that this is the sort of thing only for the older boys, or the ones who've been 'round forever and whom Pan trusts implicitly.

Bae breaths a sigh at this, glad to know that he will likely never be one of those.

This was made clear enough by his time in the Pit, with Adam and Tom. He knows that no one has said the words everyone is thinking; that the newest Lost Boys are never thrown in the Pit when they arrive, that Adam and Tom were not placed in the Pit until Baelfire joined them.

He rather doubts Pan trusts him at all, most likely because of the time he spent with the Pirate.

"Then what are we to do?" he asks, because he thinks it is expected of him, not because he really cares. He'd much rather spend his time wandering the Island, as he'd had a mind to this morning, but Felix had been there, glowering down at his disapprovingly, telling him to go back to the camp and wait for the other boys.

There is something about Felix, something dark and malignant, that reminds Baelfire very much of Hordor, the man who had once terrified the village with his brutishness, something about him that keeps Baelfire on his toes, despite the false sense of security he has here, away from the Pirate.

And if Felix is his Hordor, then Pan must be what comes next.

And Baelfire knows all too well what comes next.

Baelfire shivers, turning back to Pags, pretending that he's been listening to the younger boy's words.

In his head, he is imagining incantations of dark magic, daggers that gleam, children being trained to be little soldiers for Pan, and so Pags' next words surprise him.

They are sitting on a cliff not far from the Lost Boys' camp, he, Pags, Tom, and Adam, other Lost Boys lounging about not so far away, stuck in a limbo that is the part of the day when children seek to do nothing.

Felix isn't here, and Baelfire is keeping a constant eye out for him, but, save for seeing the older boy this morning, Baelfire hasn't seem him, nor several of the older boys, since then.

Still, there are enough of them there for Baelfire to realize he isn't going anywhere.

Not alone, at any rate. He has a feeling that his new little shadow, Pags, would follow him wherever he went, purely because he enjoys Baelfire's company so much.

And isn't that a strange, foreign notion.

"-whatever we like," Pags informs them. "Play, mostly. It's fun, playing, and sometimes the older boys build bonfires at night and we dance around them, and eat food. I'm sure we'll have one soon. And, sometimes, we go down to the mermaids and try an' spook 'em without gettin' caught, cuz then the bigger boys have to rescue us. And sometimes, we just go adventurin'. So long as we stay within Pan's boundaries, and don't do anything stupid."

Bae sighs again at this, but he hasn't caught the rest of Pags' words, beyond "food." He hasn't heard anything of food since arriving in these Lost Boys' camp, and was even beginning to think that the Lost Boys are starving him, because he dared to try and get away from the Shadow.

He is hungry.

The feeling went away at times, yesterday, as if his stomach was full, and he was able to sleep through that feeling last night, as if it wasn't truly a concern, but it is suddenly back, in full force.

"Food?" Adam echoes, glancing at the tall, branchless trees. "What food?"

Pags snorts, as if Baelfire truly has said something amusing. "Adam," he coughs, and Baelfire has the distinct impression that he is trying very hard not to laugh, "You just gotta think of it, and you'll have it. But we like to feast during the bonfires."

Baelfire just stares at him.

"You mean you haven't noticed that?" Pags guffaws. "I hope you've at least noticed that we Lost Boys don't have to sleep every night, either. Well, it's good to sleep some nights, but-"

Adam nods wearily. "Well, yeah, but..." he trails off then, glancing at Tom, who just shrugs, hanging on Pags' every word.

Baelfire noticed that most of the Boys stayed up to congratulate the King of the Moment the night last, dancing around a roaring fire and laughing at some joke Baelfire didn't understand.

He had been exhausted, and, he noticed, so had Adam and Tom. Which seemed strange enough to him, where the Lost Boys had spent most of their day running about, while they three had spent it sitting in a cave.

In truth, Baelfire has seen several boys licking their chops and biting their teeth recently, and he's been wondering what it means, but he hasn't yet thought of invisible, imaginary food, or that it might actually fill them up.

It sounds terribly like magic, to him, but then, whenever his papa conjured a loaf of bread, Baelfire could always _see_ it.

"Why don't you have to sleep?" Baelfire asks then, because he doesn't want to learn more about the food, just in case he is too hungry tomorrow to go another day without and imagines it up.

This Island reeks of magic, and he's quite sure it would do just as Pags suggests.

"Oh, I forget sometimes that you lot're new," Pags says, and sounds quite proud of himself for it, as if forgetting is a thing to be congratulated upon.

Baelfire only stares at him, quite aware that he's only just joined these Lost Boys yesterday, and thinking that Pags should at least remember that.

He is struck, suddenly, by a memory of little Micheal Darling, close to tears, promising Mr. Darling that he has no memory of eating that last creme cake that he knew John wanted, and frowns down at Pags.

"There's a spring, what runs through the mountains, and the older boys bring us canteens of it. It can heal any injury, just like the leaves and stuffs, but it also makes ya..." he seems to struggle for his next word. "You don't really need to sleep, for a couple of nights."

Baelfire stiffens, because he thinks he heard of a spring in the mountains from Hook, the one time he got the other man to admit he'd actually travelled the Island before, even if he's too scared, for some reason, to do so now, but Baelfire doesn't remember Hook painting it in a good light.

In fact, the Pirate said very little of it, other than that it was a vile vessel of _His_ , and that he wished Pan and his infernal stream would both be destroyed.

This had been, of course, after consuming quite a bit of rum.

"Cool," Tom says, eyes lighting already. "So, if we drink it all the time, do we never have to sleep?" he sounds elated by the prospect.

"Do we have to drink it?" Baelfire asks, voice very small, and the other three turn to look at him in varying degrees of surprise.

He can almost fancy that the light that shuts down behind Adam's eyes is wariness, that he's picking up on Baelfire's own feelings.

Pags glances at him. "Why wouldn't ya?" he grins. "It's 'mazing. You ain't tasted in anything like it, Bae."

"Oh," Baelfire shrugs. After all, Hook never did tell him why he hated that spring, other than that it belongs to _Him_ , and _He_ seems a much kinder host than one who killed Baelfire's mother, at any rate. Even if _He_ isn't here to prove such a thing.

Baelfire shakes that thought from his mind, because he doesn't want to agree with anything the Pirate thought. After all, this was the pirate who told him he wasn't responsible for Baelfire's mother dying, and he knows that's a lie.

He watches as Pags instructs Adam and Tom to close their eyes and think of any food they've ever wanted.

Tom does, lips smacking together a moment later as he holds something large and round in both hands, pressing nothing against his face, and eating air.

Adam just stares at him, incredulous. "Tom?" he calls out, sounding slightly concerned, but Tom only laughs, ignoring him in favor of taking another bite from the air.

Pags giggles as well, and soon the both of them are eating, and Tom turns his incredulous stare on Baelfire.

"If they're only eating imaginary food, why haven't they all starved yet?" he whispers, and Baelfire starts at being addressed again by the other boy, though he isn't sure what has caused this.

"I..." he almost says it, that terrible word that is practically blasphemy in his mind's eye now, but he doesn't, only continues to watch as Pags and Tom eat the air around them with almost feverish excitement.

Magic.

It strikes him that, at the moment, Adam seems even more suspicious now than he, though Baelfire supposes this is because he's had far more experience around odd things that shouldn't happen than the other boy.

Then again, they've both been dragged out of one world and into the other by a Shadow. He's almost wondering why Adam is still suspicious, and if this is reason enough for him to be, as well.

If the only food on the Island is the kind that is imagined, Baelfire supposes that is a sort of magic like the bean the Rheul Ghorm gave him. The kind that saves, rather than hurting. The good kind, like what she had, not the evil that his papa was capable of.

A moment later, Baelfire, too, closes his eyes, the rumbling in his stomach overtaking his wariness - for the moment.

He pictures lamb on a spit, roasted slowly over a fire and dipped in garlic sauce, a delicacy most times he'd been able to have it, in his head, licks his lips as he thinks of it, for this had always been his favorite meal back home...no, not home, he reminds himself. With his papa.

That is different from home, after all. His home was with the Darlings, and he cannot let himself forget that.

When he opens his eyes, his hands are full of food, real and tangible and there, and Baelfire stares at it for a long moment, deliberating.

Maybe this isn't magic, though he knows it is.

In any case, he's hungry.

He knows, from the weeks when his papa couldn't sell his weavings, that he should be eating slowly after going without for several days - or, at least, he thinks it has been several days - but pushes that thought to the back of his mind as he practically chokes down the meal.

And, later, when he doesn't get sick from overeating, but the roast lamb sits pleasantly in his stomach, Baelfire has no doubt that it was real.

He dreams that night about his papa pulling medicine from thin air, stopping the Ogre Wars. And then killing their maid, grinning wickedly as he did so, bloodlust in his eyes.

* * *

There is no way to measure time in Neverland, and there is something about the place that gives one the impression that they don't need to, that it simply doesn't matter. He doesn't know if he's been with the Lost Boys for two days or two years, even after sleeping a night and waking the next morning.

It's oddly comforting, but there is something digging at the back of Baelfire's mind, something he can't quite let go of.

Tom and Adam seem to be integrating well enough into their new lives, even if Adam does so with obvious reluctance, still wary, but attempting to appear less so, for Tom's sake.

Tom doesn't even seem to remember that this hasn't always been his life; sometimes, Baelfire will catch him reacting with confusion about something, but, the moment it is explained, he acts as though he's always known it.

"Pags," he asks, slowly, because he's not sure how the question will be taken, "Does anyone ever go home?" And, at the look of confusion on Pags' face, clarifies, "To their real homes. Before Neverland. Leave here, I mean."

He thinks he has his answer by the look of confusion on Pags' face, before the little boy who is not really a little boy opens his mouth.

"What are you talkin' about, Baelfire?" Pags asks with a sly grin, to hide the bemusement in his eyes. "Why would anyone want to leave Neverland?"

Baelfire blinks at him. "Well, don't you have someone back home you want to get back to?" He thinks of the Darlings as he says this, thinks of kind Mrs. Darling who always gave him an extra helping at meal times and made him think that she could have been his mama, of stern Mr. Darling, who melted under his children's wishes, of curious Wendy and her little brothers, and swallows hard.

Pags raises an eyebrow, as if he's concerned for Baelfire's sanity, now. "This is our home, Baelfire," he says, and then walks away.

Baelfire can only stare after him.

Before he can think up a suitable response, however, Nibs is calling out, "I found a trea-sure!" And the other boys jump up, excited for the prospect of something to do and running off blindly, not one of them consulting Nibs as to the location of said treasure.

Because it's always in the caves, Baelfire thinks with a groan.

He trudges into the woods after the other boys, but they eventually get so off track that, annoyed, Baelfire just makes his way to the caves alone, hands deep in his pockets and considering running away again.

There is no one around to make him feel guilty about it this time, no little Pags who would want to know why he doesn't love Neverland as the other boys do.

He could go, and no one would be the wiser.

But there's nowhere to go, as he already knows, and so he wanders down to the cave, and gets crowned King of the Moment when the other boys finally arrive, and fakes a smile every time Felix sends a suspicious look his way.

He thinks that he is perhaps the most unexcited King of the Moment ever to wear the crown in Neverland.

* * *

"I think there's something strange about this place," Baelfire confides in Adam, as they are picking up sticks to start a campfire that evening. There isn't much to do when they're not adventuring, after all, and the other Lost Boys have gone off on various little adventures without consulting them.

Even Tom is gone, and, though Baelfire is glad for the company, he's confused as to why Adam is not with the other boy.

They need the campfire for dancing. The Lost Boys love to dance, and they jog around the fire as if they are dancing to music, rather than the flames, and the drumbeats that Curly plays. Not so much for eating, when food can be conjured from the very act of thinking of it.

Adam stops, gives him a sidelong glance. "It's an 'ell of a lot different from London," he mutters finally, dipping down to pick up another stick and adding it to the pile in his arms. "Different, maybe better. Leastways there's no adults what tellin' us what to do."

"Yeah," Baelfire agrees noncommitally, "but that's not what I mean." He glances up, trying to meet Adam's eyes, but the other boy isn't looking at him. Perhaps purposely.

Baelfire forges on, "It's...I feel like something's wrong here. Don't you?"

Adam does look up then, fixing Baelfire with a look as though he suspects Baelfire of trying to trick him somehow, and then finally answering slowly, "I guess so. But...magical world and all that. Bound to be...weird at first. But ain't you glad you don't got nobody bossin' you around, the orphanages packing you off to do chores all day for some watered down gruel that the nuns probably spit in? And no food rations, I like that!"

Baelfire shrugs, not entirely making sense of everything the other boy has said. He remembers something about a war just ending in England, which is why Wendy and her brothers were just now getting their governess.

He felt another ache, wondering how Wendy had explained to her parents and the governess the fact that Baelfire is missing. He hopes that Mr. and Mrs. Darling don't think he was just some runaway, stealing food from their bellies and corrupting their children.

"Yeah," he says carefully, "but there's just something about what the Island does to us, what it's doing..."

Adam snorts, though the sound is half-hearted, at best. "It's an Island, Baelfire, not a person."

"There's magic here, though," Baelfire says, and, as far as arguments go, he thinks it is a very good one.

After a moment, Adam seems to agree. He drops his pile of sticks to the ground, sinking into it beside them, and lets out a long sigh, running a hand through his hair almost frantically. "He doesn't even seem to recognize me, sometimes. It's like he doesn't even know we're brothers, just thinks I'm another one of _them_."

Baelfire flinches. "Tom?"

"No, Felix," Adam snaps. "Yeah, Tom!"

"Sorry," Baelfire says softly, and Adam only snorts in response.

Baelfire doesn't know how long they sit there in silence, until Adam turns to him and whispers, as though he fears the very trees might overhear them, as there is no one else to listen in.

Baelfire shivers at the sudden fear that they probably can, glancing up at the trees surrounding them and moving a little closer to Adam.

"I think the Island is affecting him somehow. Because..." Adam chews on his lower lip for a moment. "Because he wants a home so badly, or something. And not us, cuz we're older and we don't really care as much. And cuz...we've already been disappointed too much."

Baelfire knows instantly that this is not the reason, because he doubts anyone wants a home more than he; he simply wants a home that isn't in Neverland. Still, he nods, because Adam finally seems to be talking to him and seems just as worried as he.

"There's other boys here who are older. Felix, for one."

Adam just shrugs. "I didn't say I had it figured, did I? Only that Tom never acted like this back in the orphanage. And he's never not even known me before."

Baelfire opens his mouth, to share his suspicions that it's more than just that, to tell him about the fact that most of the magic he's witnessed before Neverland was evil, and that the Shadow most definitely is.

He doesn't get the chance, however, before he sees some of the Lost Boys flocking back into the camp, some of them letting out hoots of alarm, that Pags has told him mean danger, mean something's wrong. Some of them, Baelfire thinks, even look scared.

The ones who have been here for a while, the ones who seem to think they've been here forever, never look frightened. Not really.

Baelfire shares a worried look with Tom, and then climbs to his feet, discarding the sticks they've been accumulating for now in lieu of something that seems more important, making their way back toward the camp.

It's a ruckus; boys running around, some of them pulling out spears from behind trees, and now the hooting sound has changed, to something far more excited, ominous.

Battle cries.

"Come on!" one of the boys, Slightly, Baelfire thinks his name is, grabs Baelfire's hand and pulls him to his feet.

Baelfire stumbles forward, nearly smacking into a tree before he rights himself. "What's going on?" he asks, noticing that other older boys are pulling the younger ones to their feet, dragging them deeper into the forest.

Slightly is panting, his face red as he motions for Baelfire to follow him, clutching a spear entirely made of wood in his left hand. "New boy," he says, "Tom. 'E's gone."

Baelfire stops in his tracks. "Gone?" he echoes, staring at Slightly for any hint of deception. And what did that mean, anyway? Gone?

"He disappeared," Slightly says, with a shrug. "Felix seems worried. He might even have to go and interrupt..." he trails off quickly. "We're all to help. Now, come on."

Adam has paled, is staring at Slightly in horror. "Gone?" he repeats, slowly, as though he's underwater. "But...how...?"

Slightly shakes his head. "Dunno. Felix says the Indians might have him. Or the Neverbeasts. Got to go." And then he's darting into the woods, and Baelfire finds himself wishing that he brought along one of those sticks after all.

Adam is still standing beside him, his face rapidly losing color, turning more and more frightened, as he whispers, "Neverbeasts and Indians?"

Baelfire takes a deep breath, getting ready to run. "Come on, Adam."

After a moment, he can hear the other boy following along behind him, his breaths coming in ragged gasps after only a few minutes.

He doesn't know how long they run with the other Lost Boys, all blood pumping and running on adrenaline, or perhaps something else, until, remarkably, they find that there is no need for the war cries, for the spears. There is no fight.

Tom comes to them, stumbling forward through the dark woods and coming to halt when the Lost Boys do, looking just as startled as they.

Felix holds up a hand, and the other boys stop their whispering, whispering that Baelfire hadn't even noticed until that moment.

Tom stares at them all, with a perplexed expression on his face, as if he's not sure who they are or what they are doing here.

Adam takes a step forward, pushing past the other boys until he's standing just in front of Tom, eyes wide. "Tom?" he whispers, as if he afraid that, if he speaks louder, something will break.

Tom blinks at Adam, a haunted look in his eyes as he seems to stare right through the other boy. Then he shakes his head, and collapses.

Adam darts forward before anyone else can, gathering his little brother up in his arms before he can hit the ground, calling his name frantically, and, in doing so, lifting up the back of his shirt for the other Lost Boys to see.

At first, Baelfire doesn't understand what's wrong with Tom; his eyes need a moment to adjust, for surely it can't be that bad.

And then he realizes what his mind doesn't really want him to see.

"By the gods, look at him!" one of the boys exclaims, and Baelfire does just that, storing in the back of his mind the other boy's use of the word 'gods,' and wonders just what that means.

Could it be that there are others from his papa's world, here? Others, like Baelfire?

The long, striped gashes on Tom's torso are plainly visible now, raging and red and far too deep.

"He's been attacked by a Neverbear," Devin murmurs, and then all of the Lost Boys are moving at once, fast and practiced, pushing Adam out of the way and lowering Tom onto the ground with a surprising gentleness. Hands reach out to assess the injury, pulling back with sympathetic hisses and murmurs of, "Ain't gonna make it." "Too deep." And "Shame."

Neverbear?

Baelfire can see the panic building up in Adam, at the thought of losing his little brother, and, feeling strangely detached from it all, wonders if his papa felt anything like the same at the thought of losing him. Then he realizes that his papa was more likely to feel that panic over losing his magic, than Baelfire.

And what is the point of magic if it can't keep people together?

Adam needs Tom, and Tom needs to live.

Felix kneels down beside Tom, pulling out a flask from over his shoulder and uncorking it, the other Lost Boys gasping and stuttering in surprise as he moves to pour it over Tom's injured skin.

Curly reaches out on what Baelfire thinks must be instincts, as though he wants to steal the flask for himself, and Felix shoots him a dark look.

"I only had enough for emergencies," he says, instead of pouring it on Tom; Baelfire's no fool, he's reasoned out that it is likely the only thing that can heal such a wound, if it has such healing properties.

And besides, Tom has very little time.

Curly continues to glare at him, but now Felix is ignoring him, pouring the water out over Tom, even as the younger boy writhes and attempts to pull away, much as he is unconscious to the world, as though his very body is fighting the magic of the water.

It has a shiny, ethereal look to it, the water does, and Baelfire almost imagines that it's humming as it pours over Tom; and then he watches with wide eyes, despite having seen something like this before, from his papa's healing magic, as the water literally washes away the blood and the wound itself.

In the next moment, Tom is turned on his side, taking a long, gasping breath.

Adam gasps, falling down beside him and pulling Tom into his arms, promising that everything will be all right and now and asking if he's okay.

Tom just nods, looking a little confused by Adam's affectionate embrace, and wiggling away from him at the first opportunity. Adam's face falls, but he doesn't try to stop him.

Tom turns to Felix in the next moment, grinning. "That was...amazing!" he breathes, and Felix smirks.

"Good as new, huh?" he asks, and Tom nods eagerly.

"Can I have some more?"

The Lost Boys dissolve into laughter, and it seems as though the tension and fear of the moment is gone, as though it never existed. Save for that it remains in Adam's wary eyes, as he watches his brother run off with the other boys and ignore him completely.

Baelfire walks back to camp with him, because he feels like he should, but neither of them say a word. Baelfire knows that Adam must be happy that his brother is safe, healed, but it's not quite the same, knowing that the person you love doesn't care about you quite as much, is it?

Tom doesn't once look back at them, skipping ahead and not even wincing from old, forgotten pain.

* * *

Baelfire is beginning to think that the Island is more magical than Felix explained, that first day. He is seeing a trend, first in the other Lost Boys, and then in Tom, and then in Adam, and he fears it is beginning to affect him, too.

The Island changes them. He is not sure if it makes them forget their past lives, beyond Neverland, or simply become indifferent to them, but he knows that such a thing should not be happening so quickly.

He thinks this is why the Lost Boys left them in that cave at first, so they'd be less scared and wanting to go home, though he doesn't know why they left _him_ in that cave.

He doesn't start noticing it until he sees it affecting Adam; sees the other boy appear less and less wary of their kidnappers, sees him growing used to his new role as a Lost Boy of Neverland where before Baelfire thought he had gained an ally against their captors.

He isn't sure what prompts this change; sometime after Tom woke up from his injuries by the Neverbear, never once explaining how he'd gotten them, as though he didn't even remember the incident, Adam begins playing with the other boys, running off instead of trading theories with Baelfire, dancing around the fire as though he hears the music that Baelfire can't hear, but which the Lost Boys seem to.

He even starts going on the treasure hunts again, even though before he seemed less enthusiastic than Baelfire about them.

It isn't until he watches Adam and Tom sitting together by the ocean, counting sea shells and laughing, that Baelfire realizes the cause behind the sudden change. Realizes that Adam hasn't really changed at all; he just wants to be near his brother.

Pretending until it was real.

Baelfire feels an ache in his chest then, and wonders if he would do the same, if he had a brother here with him.

He doesn't have long to think on this, though; as if sensing his darkening thoughts, Pags comes forward to beg him to play catch the crown, the one they all seem so obsessed with.

So he doesn't get the chance to talk to Adam again alone for a long time; he doesn't know if it's been days or hours, and he doesn't care.

The moment he catches him, while the Lost Boys are having a scavenger hunt (the next item on Baelfire's list being Faerie dust, and he isn't sure how they're supposed to find that), Baelfire pounces.

"Hey," he says, and Adam looks up from where he's searching by a particularly large rock.

"Hey," he says, sounding almost sullen, almost angry that Baelfire is talking to him at all.

"Adam, something's wrong. With Tom. This isn't..."

"Sod off, Baelfire," Adam says abruptly, and then turns back to the fire.

Bae stares at him in shock, but doesn't attempt to follow him.

He doesn't see the point.

His only thought is that he must get out of here, and soon. He has to get out of Neverland, because this place is just as magical as the Enchanted Forest, and he needs to escape it. Needs to get back to the Darlings.

Because he saw the look in Adam's eyes, and knows that, much as he'll likely continue to deny it forever (which is a very real possibility, considering that Neverland makes them live forever), Adam is just as scared as Baelfire is, perhaps even more so.

* * *

"Tom," Bae whispers into the darkness, moving across a few sleeping boys blindly before he finds the previously wounded boy, propped up against a tree and panting heavily in his sleep, as if his body knows he is pain but is too tired to wake and try to fix it.

When this fails to stir the boy, Bae moves forward still further, nudging him with his hand.

Tom groans in his sleep, and then, turning over, lets out a soft, "Mama..."

Baelfire freezes despite himself at the simple word.

 _"I didn't kill your mother. We fell in love, and we ran off together. Your father lied to you. He tore out her heart and crushed it in front of me."_

Then he shakes his head; he doesn't believe the words, he reminds himself. And even if he does, it doesn't matter. Like he told the pirate, Hook is just as much at fault for what happened to his mother as Bae's father, so really, it doesn't matter.

But he's seen his papa rip out hearts, before. Not often, as his papa generally kept the most violent acts out of Baelfire's sight, even if they were not kept from his hearing, but often enough.

"Bae?" he blinks, glancing up to realize that Tom is watching him, and wonders how long the other boy has been doing so.

Before he even realizes what he's doing, Baelfire opens his mouth and asks, "Do you remember your mother, Tom?" he asks, because sometimes it scares him that he can't remember his, even if she was never around much to be remembered.

Tom looks at him, eyebrows furrowing together in confusion before he laughs and says,  
"Don't be silly, Baelfire. Of course I do. She..." and then his brows furrow further, and he blinks owlishly at Bae. "What are you doing, waking me up in the middle of the night, anyway?"

Baelfire shakes his head, not in the mood to answer questions. "Please, Tom, tell me what you remember."

Tom just blinks at him again. Then, "She has...had pretty blue eyes, and light blonde hair, and she was...no, but that isn't right. She wasn't pretty; she was mean and used to take me out behind that big building we lived in and beat me, 's how I came to here injured, and I remember that because she had such red hair, and it reminded me of blood...no, that isn't quite right either..." and he trails off then, and it takes Baelfire another minute or two to realize that he's fallen back asleep.

And it is then that Baelfire understands. The other boys don't remember, and Tom and Adam are beginning to forget, because they don't _want_ to remember.

And he begins to wonder then, why he does.

That night, when he sleeps, Baelfire realizes he can't remember what his mother looked like.

A/N: I'm so sorry for the lack of updates lately; I've been caught up in NaNoWriMo all this month, and been sick, and also this chapter was pretty hard to write, for some reason. I'm not all that impressed with it, but oh well. The next chapter will definitely be fun. I'm sorry if anyone else felt like this was a filler chapter; it was important for later chapters, let's say. Don't worry, Pan will be making his appearance very, very soon. *evil laughter*


	5. The Piper's Song

_"You have an invention?"_

 _"I attract attention/_ _Chiefly with a secret charm/_ _On creatures that do people harm/_ _The moal, the toad, the newt and viper/_ _Who doesn't know of the Pied Piper?"_

 _-The Pied Piper of Hamelein, by Robert Browning_

It happens innocently enough. No one tells him that there are mermaids on Neverland; perhaps they are all meant to find out the secrets of Neverland for themselves. He thinks that might be the case, since no one but Pags has offered to show him around yet.

Pags and Tom have gone off with most of the younger boys to pick mushrooms, deep in the Neverforest, and Baelfire, tired of Adam's sulking attitude, as the other boy refuses to even speak to him now without a frown, reluctantly agrees to a game of hide and seek with Curly, Slightly, and Max, some of the older boys who don't want to hunt for mushrooms when they can just imagine them.

"First one caught'll be it, next round," Curly informs them, but he's looking at Baelfire while he says it, as if he very much expects Baelfire to be this first one. After all, Baelfire has been here the shortest out of all of them.

The boys to disband, all running off in different directions at once, Curly loudly counting to four hundred and three. Baelfire's not sure of the significance of this number, nor why Curly has to count for so long, but he doesn't really care.

He expects to be the last person Curly catches.

He supposes that the idea of hide and seek appeals to him more than he wants to admit. Hiding away from the other Lost Boys, even if he knows it won't be for long and that there's no real way of leaving them indefinitely, is comforting, in some way that he doesn't quite understand, and a way he doesn't quite want to acknowledge.

It's cowardly, he knows, but he can't help the sigh of relief he gives at being alone in the woods for the first time since...ever.

He breathes in the fresh scent of leaves, the grass like needles underneath his feet, for he's given up his old, soaked leather shoes in exchange for some of the moccasins the Lost Boys claim the Indians gave them, whomever they are, feels the light wind against his face, and for a moment, one moment before he reminds himself that the Enchanted Forest isn't really his home, never was, he imagines that he is back in the little village by the woods, and that he's playing hide and seek with Moraine and the other village children who liked him before his papa was the Dark One.

He almost believes it, for a moment.

He looks around; the trees are tall and branchless for the first few feet, but he thinks that he could jump and make it to one of the branches, and then climb the rest of the way up, to where the branches are so thick that no one could possibly see him from below.

He tries, and is rather pleasantly surprised that he can make the jump. He wonders if Curly will be able to; probably not, and then he can stay up here as long as he pleases.

The branch is surprisingly smooth, though, and he almost loses his hold on it, just barely managing to cling to it desperately enough to pull himself up, and then there is another branch, and another, and another.

He doesn't stop, doesn't even look down to see how far he's climbed. It seems to him that there is something else, some unseen force, pushing him to climb higher and higher, like if he reaches the top the world will be made of a completely different light. Maybe he will see the different worlds, hanging down from the sky, and they will whisk him away.

Maybe he won't feel quite so abandoned up there, where the Lost Boys won't be able to see him.

Tom and Adam were abandoned by their parents, just as he was. He wonders if all of the Lost Boys of Neverland are lost in the same manner, abandoned by their parents and brought to Neverland where there's magic and no adults to tell them what to do.

He reaches out for the next branch and he grimaces as it bends beneath the weight of only his hand, but he pulls himself up anyway, for there is another, sturdier branch just above this one, and if he can reach it, he'll be invisible to anyone on the ground.

He supposes it is foolish to continue refusing to become one of them based on principle alone; after all, like them, he has been lost, but three times over: once by his mama, when she ran off and left him, then by his papa, when he was too much a coward to go with him, and then by Ho-the Pirate. And he left the Darlings, to save them, but he had left all the same.

The branch twists and breaks off under his weight, and Baelfire jerks in surprise, losing his leverage. He is just about to go tumbling down to the earth once more when a hand wraps around his wrists, pulling him up.

He holds on to it tightly, and there is a whoosh of air as the world spins around, him before he finds himself deposited upon a much sturdier branch, breathing heavily.

"You wanna do something more fun than hiding in a tree like Neversquirrel?" a voice says from above him, and Baelfire startles, looking up.

Nibs, a Lost Boy a bit older in body than himself, but who claims that he has been here almost as long as Felix, is sitting on the branch above Baelfire, grinning down at him.

Baelfire blinks. "How...how long have you been there?" he demands, and the other boy just shrugs.

"Long enough to see that you're too old to play hide and seek correctly," the other boy tells him.

Baelfire flushes. He mumbles something like, "Didn't know what else to do," and Nibs guffaws.

"Come exploring with me," Nibs says, and Baelfire blinks at him.

"Exploring?" he echoes, and Nibs rolls his eyes.

"Yeah, 'xplorin," Nibs repeats. "You've only been in Neverland a little while, Baelfire, and it's a big island. Lots to see beyond the woods."

"I've been to the caves," Baelfire objects.

"But have you seen the Indians yet? Or the Lagoon? Or Cannibal Cove? Or Skull Island?"

Baelfire shivers at those last two names, but he knows already that he's going to go with Nibs before he gives an answer.

There is something about Nibs that draws Baelfire to him; the other boy, just a bit older than Baelfire, he thinks, though Nibs talks as though he's been in Neverland Forever, never backs down in anything, always yearning for another adventure, brave to a fault.

Amd exploring...exploring is what his mama left him for, so there must be some enjoyment in it, if she loved it more than he.

If she never came back.

 _"She wanted to come back for you, when you were older."_

And after all, there is a part of him that doesn't want to be left alone with his own thoughts.

He shakes that thought from his mind and grins at Nibs.

"Sure," he says, "but won't Curly get confused when he can't find me?"

Nibs shrugs. "Then you'll have won."

Baelfire nods, climbing down from the low branch he's occupying, reaching a hand out to help Nibs down from below.

But Nibs only smirks at him, and in the next moment drops from the branch as though he's done this a thousand times.

Baelfire darts forward, but the other boy has already landed on his feet.

Like a cat, Baelfire thinks.

"So," Nibs says, when Baelfire has joined him on the ground once more, "where do you wanna go?"

Baelfire thinks for a moment, quickly discarding the ideas of the Skull Island or Cannibal Cove.

"The Lagoon," he says finally, for his papa has always hated Lagoons, for, he said, playing host to wicked creatures.

His papa was the Dark One. He had claimed the Reul Ghorm was a wicked creature, as well.

Nibs grins. "I was hopin' you'd say that," he says, and immediately turns left and starts jogging through the woods. Baelfire hurries to keep up.

"Why is that?"

Nibs mutters something that sounds like, "Where I wanted to go anyway," before pulling one of the arrows out of the quiver hanging over his shoulder and bending down to pick up a stone. Baelfire watches, rather fascinated, as he begins to sharpen the arrowhead with practiced precision.

They walk for the most part in silence, occasionally interrupted by Nibs pointing out some landmark where he's adventured before, or telling some story about the last treasure hunt when he searched around here.

Baelfire listens, but only half-heartedly. He had hoped that being with another person would distract him from his own thoughts, but he finds that it seems to be doing the opposite. That he can't help but keep wondering why Nibs is so happy here, why Tom is.

Eventually, because he can't stand not knowing, he decides to just ask.

And, besides Pags, he's the only one who doesn't seem to mind that Baelfire isn't like the other Lost Boys. That Baelfire doesn't want to be here and still clings to that part of him that cannot be considered a Lost Boy at all.

So Baelfire has to ask.

"Do you remember what your life was like, before?"

Nibs glances at him slyly. "Do you?"

Baelfire hesitates only a moment, and then, because he knows intuitively that Nibs won't tell, nods.

Nibs doesn't appear surprised. "We all remember a little bit, Baelfire," he says, his voice lecturing in a way that reminds Baelfire somewhat of Wendy, when she used to tell him and the other boys to eat their greens. "Some more than others. Most of us just don't want to."

"What do you remember?" Baelfire hazards, and Nibs actually smiles.

"Just a little. I've been here a long time, anyway." A pause, and Baelfire realizes the other boy is no longer looking at him, but staring off into the distance with a sort of gleam in his eyes. "I remember my mother."

Baelfire blinks, a sudden surge of jealousy running through him, though he isn't entirely certain why. "Was she...beautiful?" he asks, his throat threatening to close around the words.

Nibs doesn't answer that question, though. He just fiddles with the arrow he is sharpening as they walk, and finally murmurs, "I don't remember much else but that she wanted always for a cheque book." He turns then, his expression so earnest that Baelfire feels a stab of guilt for his jealousy. "If only I knew what one was, I would have given it to her."

Baelfire doesn't know what one of these is either, so he just shrugs. "I'm sure she knew that."

Nibs gives him a long look, and then starts walking again. "I'm not."

Baelfire hesitates even more before asking the next question, because he can sense that he's finally getting on Nibs' nerves and the other boy has an arrow in his hand, sharp enough to kill, now.

"Do you ever wish you could go back?"

Nibs smirks. "Nope," he says, and shoves the arrow back into its quiver before reaching for another one.

Baelfire raises a brow. "Why not?"

Nibs looks surprised that he's still talking. "We're almost there," he says, instead of answering, and Baelfire looks up.

They might have been walking for hours, or minutes, for Baelfire doesn't at all feel tired; he's noticed, in the time since he arrived on the Island, that he hardly ever feels tired now.

The Neverforest is clearing before them, opening up to a rocky cliff face that slowly descends into the murky water below, lapping against the shores almost playfully. There's a beach on the other side of the Lagoon, and Baelfire instantly wishes that they were over there, so that they could better get to the Lagoon, but Nibs doesn't seem too worried about it. He walks forward in his moccasins, padding against the stones as though they aren't at all smooth enough to stumble on.

After a moment, Nibs turns around, beckoning Baelfire behind him, and Baelfire follows, noticing them for the first time like someone coming out of a dream.

They sit on the rocks below, some of them, their large fish tails, all different colors, at odds with their beautiful female bodies, covered only by their long hair.

They're beautiful, the strange women who live in the water, their webbed hands combing through their lovely hair far more efficiently than Wendy's brush ever did hers, splashing about and laughing heartily with the ease of only the most carefree. Some of them are even dipping their heads in and out of the water, as though they can breathe below it just as easily as above.

The vines clinging to the cliffs around them only serve as a backdrop to their own beauty, and some of them move about in the water, pulling at vines and using them to trap the other girls.

They're the most beautiful creatures Baelfire has ever seen.

Baelfire takes a step forward before he can stop himself, a small grin on his face.

"Stay back," Nibs whispers harshly, throwing out an arm in front of Baelfire, and Baelfire glances at him.

"What are they?" he whispers to Nibs, who is staring down at the pool with wide eyes.

Nibs raises a hand, as if trying to tell him to shut up, but then murmurs, not once taking his eyes off the creatures, "Mermaids."

There aren't mermaids in the Enchanted Forest.

There were, once, a very long time ago, if his papa's bedtime stories are to be believed, but they were driven out, along with the goddess Ursula, many years ago. Legend says that she has never given up trying to find a way to return, but has, so far, failed. They can travel between realms well enough, but a barrier of ice keeps them from that world.

Baelfire has always wanted to see a mermaid.

From the time he was a small child, those stories had always been the most fascinating to him, of women with fish tails who sang lovely, dangerous songs, dragging men down to their underwater cities, not realizing that the men would never survive such a journey. Of the fierce and brave knight who survived the journey, feasting on seafood while breathing through magic, but forced to leave in the morning and unable, ever, to return.

Made more so by his papa's animated descriptions of them, different every time, as Milah sat and listened, too, one of the only times when they had truly felt like a _family_.

After she...left, he realizes now, that story had become a mere memory, at the back of Baelfire's mind, and his papa hardly ever told it again.

But Baelfire has never lost his desire to see a mermaid.

So, perhaps, he is excited, despite himself, when he stumbles upon the mermaids on the Island. He reasons with himself that, just because he doesn't like what the Island does to the other boys, doesn't mean he can't be excited at the prospect of seeing a mermaid.

He learns soon enough that mermaids are not the gentle, foolish creatures they were in his papa's bedtime stories. At least, not here in Neverland.

He takes another step forward, ignoring Nibs' whispered warning. He isn't normally cocky; quite the opposite, for all that he doesn't want to be cowardly, but something draws him toward these creatures, and he feels as if he moves forward with feet that are not his own.

"Baelfire!" he hears Nibs hiss behind him, and wonders idly at that, for he has always thought the other boy one of the bravest of the Lost Boy, always the first to run off on an adventure, or into the waters to swim, even though they're told that the waters are not safe for swimming.

Something about that last thought niggles at the back of his mind, something he should remember out the waters not being safe...

The mermaids turn as one as he gets closer, their eyes widening as they begin to hiss and murmur amongst each other.

He notices that Nibs is no longer calling out behind him, but nor does he hear the other boy's feet following behind him.

He's standing on the shore, as near to the water as possible without stepping into it, when the mermaids finally deign to acknowledge him, sliding off the rocks situated in the middle of the Lagoon like snakes before swimming toward him.

"Hello there," one of them says, a wide smile on her face, and suddenly she is in the water just in front of him, and he feels some odd compulsion to squat down so that they can be at face level.

The water is not shallow here; it is deep and murky, deep enough that he can only see the mermaids from their necks up as they swim toward him, and he teeters on the edge of the shoreline to keep from falling in.

"Hullo," he says, and the other mermaids, quickly gathering around, begin to giggle at this.

"Are you new here?" one of them asks, reaching out of the water with her webbed hand and pointing at his moccasin-clad foot with something like fascination, looking almost as if she wants to touch it and is restraining herself. She doesn't wait for his answer. "What are those?"

"M-Moccasins," he says, finding his mouth rather dry. "Shoes."

"Shoes!" the ethereal beings whisper rather loudly to each other, and then one of them, with shining red hair and bright brown eyes, asks him, "What are they for?"

"Uh..." for a moment, he's forgotten completely what they are for, and then he remembers. "To protect my feet," he says, rather lamely.

"Feet," the mermaids repeat, as if this word is strange and foreign to them, some of them even giggling a bit as they say it. "What strange things, humans have. It must make it so difficult to swim."

Baelfire blushes at that, though he's not sure why, and then the pretty one, the blonde who looks like Moraine on a good day, when the food was readily available and she'd had a wash in the stream, swims forward, until she is right at the edge of the water, reaching out a hand toward him.

He feels oddly entranced by that hand, feels as though he should reach forward and grab it, though he isn't sure why; he thinks that she wants him to, though.

When he doesn't move, her pretty lips turn down into a pout, and then she says, in that sonorous lilt, "Would you like to hear a song? My sisters and I do love to Sing, and we would love to sing for you."

He nods, not trusting himself to speak.

" _Patrick, Darling,_

 _Since you left me_

 _I am undone_

 _Mother loves you,_

 _Gods, save my son_!"

They begin to pull him into the water along with their pretty voices, and he finds an odd part of himself resisting, though he isn't certain why. He'd much rather stay in the water and listen to the mermaids' songs than go back to the Lost Boys.

He feels a cool, webbed hand wrap around his wrist and pull gently, and he shuffles forward, somehow forgetting that he has feet, if only for a moment. He wants nothing more than to come with them, like the brave knight, to see their underwater cities and be somewhere nice, if only for a little while. He almost wants to dive in.

"Stay away from him," Felix is suddenly by Baelfire's side, seeming to come out of thin air, grabbing the smooth white hand around Baelfire's wrist and prying it off angrily.

The creature hisses at Felix, baring long, sharp fangs that Baelfire doesn't remember seeing before, drawing herself up further out of the water, long blonde hair spilling over her shoulders and chest, eyes blazing with undisguised anger. The other mermaids behind her hiss angrily as well, but do not move forward, almost as if they are afraid to do so.

"You promised us," the blonde says, and her voice sounds like that of a hissing snake now, rather than a beautiful woman with a fish tail, the siren voice that Baelfire heard before.

Baelfire shivers, blinking and shaking his head as the sound almost threatens to return, if only for a moment.

To his surprise, Felix seems completely unaffected. "And you'll get what's yours," he snaps, voice cold and angry, "but _he_ ," and here he jerks his head at Baelfire, "is not it. So let him go, or I tell Pan that you've been...playing again."

The mermaid rears back, eyes going terribly wide as her mouth suddenly starts to quiver. The fangs retract almost instantly.

"You know how jealous he gets when others start playing without him, don't you?" Felix continues, a distinct amusement in his voice; he is taunting her now.

The mermaid drops Baelfire's wrist abruptly, and then disappears beneath the shimmery, filthy waters of the lagoon once more, as fast as she appeared.

Baelfire breathes a silent sound of relief, shaking his head to clear it of the final thoughts of joining the mermaids, but, with Felix's sudden appearance, their enchantment over him, if that is indeed what it was, seems to have ended.

He feels a short flash of anger, that they were using magic on him to pull him below the depths to drown, or at least, he assumes that's what they were planning, and then shivers, standing slowly.

Felix drops Baelfire's wrist, jumping to his feet and dusting off his clothes as though the mere presence of the mermaid has infected them, somehow. Or maybe it's Baelfire he's dusting off.

Baelfire climbs to his feet. "What...what was that?" he demands, trying to keep the tremor out of his own voice.

Felix eyes him, falling down onto one of the nearby rocks and pulling out a knife to sharpen. "Mermaid," he says, no longer looking at Baelfire.

Baelfire rolls his eyes. "I...yeah, I sort of got that part."

Felix eyes him. "Then why'd you ask?"

"Why'd you save me?" Baelfire counters. "You don't like me."

He knows this, and it is further reinforced when Felix does not even bother to deny the accusation.

The older boy draws up to his full height then, glaring Baelfire down. "Baelfire," he drawls, sounding torn between frustration and bemusement, "Do you know how long you were with that pirate?"

Baelfire shrugs, tempted to remind him that time doesn't work correctly in Neverland, so he doesn't know. "I...probably a...I dunno. Why?"

Felix just shakes his head, looking almost disgusted. "And, in all of that time, _He_ kept looking for you, _He_ didn't give up. And I follow _Him_. What's so hard to understand about that?"

Baelfire inhales sharply. "What does he want with me?" he finally gets the courage to ask, because this question has been plaguing him for too long now.

He realizes that he is not like the other boys. The subtle hints that he is the reason Pan is still off at his Thinking Tree, upset, tell him that, along with the time spent in that cave, while Pan apparently deliberated over what to do with him.

He just doesn't understand what; he's nothing special, and his only guess is that he didn't truly want to come to Neverland, that because he sacrificed himself for John and Micheal, he isn't right, somehow.

That thought fills him with a thrill of hope, and he swallows hard, wondering if the Shadow ever makes return journeys, with the Lost Boys.

If it does, he could go back. Could go back to John and Micheal and Wendy and Mr. and Mrs. Darling...

"Nothing in particular from you," Felix says, and Baelfire can see from the troubled look in his eyes as he regards Baelfire that he's lying. He's seen that look too often on his papa's face. "He just...wasn't sure of your loyalties, after you time with that...pirate." He practically spits the title, with far more vehemence than Baelfire has been lately, in the privacy of his own thoughts. "But he cares about all of his Lost Boys. Keeping them."

And doesn't that sound terribly ominous, rather than reassuring.

Baelfire shakes his head. "Then where is he? If he's decided that I'm...what, trustworthy now?"

Baelfire hasn't even decided if he's trustworthy or not, so he highly doubts this fabricated story to begin with.

Felix's lips thin into something almost resembling a worried smile. "He'll be back," he says, confidently. "He never leaves Forever, after all." And then, "Stay away from the mermaids, Baelfire." And then, louder, "And don't you come back here either, Nibs!"

And then he's gone, hopping up onto one of the boulders and hurrying away, and Baelfire is only left to stare after him, even more confused at the end of this conversation than he was at the beginning.

Nibs emerges from the trees, looking rather shamefaced, but not for long.

"Race you back to the camp? You can look down from there and see every ship that's ever crashed in Neverland."

And Baelfire shrugs, and then nods.

* * *

"Neverbear! East side of the encampment!" one of the boys runs into the camp shouting, holding a bloodied spear (Baelfire is surprised to see that the blood is blue), and waving his other hand wildly above his head.

The Lost Boys are on their feet in an instant, and Baelfire follows suit an instant later, glancing nervously at Pags, who was sitting beside him just a moment ago.

The bear comes tumbling through the Neverforest after the boy who had shouted a warning, a boy whose name Baelfire can't even remember. It's huge; almost as large as one of the Ogres back in his old world, and he wonders how Adam ever managed to escape one of these creatures in the first place, let alone injured and covered in the scent of his own blood.

It is the first time he's seen any of the Lost Boys really fight, with intention to hurt (kill) and it strikes Baelfire how very different this is from the fighting in the cave on his first day of adventuring, when Curly and Deni fought over that stupid crown.

This is real.

And the boys who do fight move as though they have always done so, fluidly and terrifyingly, and Baelfire can only watch, standing next to Tom and Adam.

Even little Pags has joined the fight, and Baelfire is shocked to see him move as one of the more experienced soldiers of the First Ogre's War, as though he has always walked about with a spear in hand.

Baelfire never learned to fight beyond wooden swords; he never had to. He always had his papa to protect him, and, though his papa was perfectly willing to dabble in other dark arts if he could convince Baelfire of their merit, he had always been strangely unwilling to teach him to fight. And Hook...The Pirate never offered. Baelfire blushes as he thinks of how easily the Pirate shoved away Baelfire's sword, when he'd been so angry about seeing that picture of his mother.

"I can't wait to learn how to do that," Tom breathes, face flushed in excitement, and Baelfire thinks he might be sick.

He can remember when he wanted to fight, too, when he tried to convince his papa that fighting was for the best, that he wanted to be brave.

He thinks that there is a difference between bravery and fighting, now.

After the span of what seems like a few minutes, the Lost Boys seem to have the Neverbear surrounded, held down with ropes that seem to materialize in their hands, tied down with wooden stakes. The creature roars and bucks against the ropes, but there are three arrows in its back, and, despite the sharp inhales and jumping back that its captors are doing, it isn't going anywhere.

Baelfire notices with a surprising amount of relief that only one of the Lost Boys is healed, and he's already reaching for one of the leaves off of a nearby tree, as if this is a remarkably common experience.

Felix is standing as close to the Neverbear as anyone dares, smirking a little as he glances up. "Adam," he says sharply, and Adam, from where he is standing awkwardly behind Tom and Baelfire, comes hesitantly forward, looking as though he will start running the moment the Neverbeast moves an inch.

When he's finally standing next to Felix, though, the older boy says, "This Neverbear tried to kill you. Or one of its brothers did. So now it's your turn. Get your vengeance."

Adam gulps at that, glancing from the knife Felix is holding out to him to the Neverbear tied rather insecurely down.

And then, he picks up the knife.

His hand is shaking as he moves forward, and Baelfire is convinced up until the last moment, until the very moment the knife pierces the Neverbear's hide, that he isn't going to do it. It's why Baelfire doesn't step forward, doesn't tell him not to.

Adam glances back at Tom, and then the blade enters the creature.

"Adam," Tom whispers, and the look on his face is somewhere close to stricken, or awed.

Baelfire can't tell.

Baelfire tries to think of one time Tom has referred to Adam by his real name, beyond just "One of the Lost Boys," since the island so clearly...changed him.

He can't.

Adam glances up at Tom, the blue blood of the creature covering his clothes, his face, his hair, and Baelfire wonders absentmindedly why it hasn't simply magicked away yet.

The two brothers lock eyes for a moment, and then Adam smiles and wipes at the blood that's splattered on his face and clothes.

Baelfire backs away, his feet moving of their own volition. In the back of his mind, he can hear something like his own voice, a bit younger, a bit more naïve, mentioning with a voice dulled by shock that there is blood on his papa's boots.

He thought then that his papa just hadn't noticed, though he couldn't imagine how someone could just not notice something like that.

He sees now that he was wrong. That blood is something carried like a trophy.

He runs.

He thinks he hears voices calling out behind him, but he doesn't care. He thinks that it's cowardly to run like this, but he doesn't care about that, either.

He runs all the way to the place he thinks is called Cannibal Cove, and for the first time, wonders at the name, and barely manages to make it to a bush before sicking up.

It seems to take longer to get here than it did to get to the Mermaid Lagoon, but he knows from past experience that the Lost Boys' camp moves to different places in the Neverforest at random, never staying in the same place for longer than a night.

He sinks down into the dirt after that, not possessing the energy to do anything else, swinging his feet over the side of the cliff that surrounds that disturbing cove and closing his eyes.

"You all right?" a voice behind him asks, and Baelfire jumps to his feet, spinning around, only to be faced with...Nibs. He blinks, lowering his guard and feeling slightly foolish as he assesses the look on the other boy's face.

"Fine," he grits out, and sits back down in the dirt, hugging his knees and staring out at the horizon beyond Cannibal Cove, or, what would be the horizon, if Neverland was a normal world with a functioning sun.

After a moment, Nibs sinks down beside him.

"Sorry I got you in trouble with Felix," Baelfire says grudgingly after a long silence, and Nibs just snorts.

"S'Okay. Not like it was real trouble anyway; we're all kids here, no adults to give us real trouble. Like discipline, or anything horrid." Baelfire cracks a small smile at that, and, encouraged, Nibs goes on. "I just had to go on patrol with the older boys for a little while. Sometimes that's even fun."

Baelfire just shrugs.

"Anyway, we aren't supposed to go near the mermaids," Nibs admits, looking a little chagrined. But he smirks in the next moment. "But I think that all the new ones should see them at least once, before being scared away. Heck if I didn't hear that we were supposed to stay away from 'em and go chasing after 'em, first chance I got." He snorts. "Got dragged under the water and Pan had to save me. Still too dumb not to go back, though." He glances back at the Lagoon. "Pan's got a deal to keep away most of the time, but walking right in is basically stupid. But they're awfully pretty."

Baelfire knows he's supposed to laugh, but instead he shivers. "Pan? Then...you've seen him?"

Nibs shoots him an odd look. "'Course I have."

"Then..."

"Then why hasn't he come back?" Nibs finishes shrewdly, and Baelfire nods. "Why haven't you seen him yet?"

Baelfire has seen no sign of Him since joining the Lost Boys, and he's beginning to wonder if He is even a real person, at all, or more a figment of the Island, a terror to keep the grownups at bay.

But Wendy had told him that she spoke with Him, that He sent her back...he thinks...That memory seems a bit jumbled now, though he doesn't know why. While he was with the Pirate, he remembered it clear as day.

And Nibs seems to think he's real. Says he saved him from the mermaids.

"He has other things to do now," Nibs says with a shrug, as if this should be enough of an answer.

It isn't.

Baelfire has always been an inquisitive child; when his mama went away for hours at a time when she was a child, he would always want to know where she was going, why she'd taken so long about it, and why she couldn't take him with her, next time.

When he first discovered his papa at the spinning wheel, he'd wanted to know everything about the work his papa did, about how it was done and why, about why his papa seemed to enjoy it so much, and if he would, as well.

And of course his papa had indulged him, as he always had before becoming the Dark One, but after Baelfire's mama had left.

Baelfire remembers the first time he asked his papa to teach him the wheel; remembers how his papa could sit for hours, spinning away with a blank look in his eyes, far away from Baelfire and the rest of the village, while Baelfire could only handle a few minutes of doing the same without some sort of distraction.

And so his papa would tell him stories, made up stories that Baelfire now appreciates were probably difficult to come up with at the time, given how many questions Baelfire would ask that poked through a plot and forced his papa to come up with some explanation.

"Like what?" he asks, even if there is a voice at the back of his head yelling that he should be quiet.

It sounds disturbingly like Hook's.

Nibs gives him an odd look, then, the first look of distrust he's awarded Baelfire since he came here. "How long did you spend with those pirates, Baelfire?" he asks instead of answering.

Bae shrugs. It is the second time someone has asked him that in...recently. After all, he doesn't know how much time has passed. "I dunno."

And he doesn't. He figured out the night that Wendy left for Neverland with the Shadow that time worked differently here then it did in other worlds. She'd been gone only a night, and yet she told him it had been more like a week, to her.

He thought he'd spent months with Hook, and yet he cannot, when he thinks of it, remember if this was actually so, and wonders if he is still in the same night back in London, and Wendy and John and the rest of the Darlings were just as worried for him as he had been for Wendy.

"He came to see you, when you finally arrived," Nibs offers quietly, more subdued now, though Baelfire cannot say why. "He doesn't, normally. He...acted strangely, and then told Felix that he was going to his Thinking Tree." He says this like he thinks perhaps there is something wrong with Baelfire, that _He_ left so quickly to go to his Thinking Tree.

"Thinking Tree?" Baelfire asks, dubious.

Nibs nods. "It's where he goes when he wants to be alone." A pause. "He's never been gone this long, before. He seemed real upset, when he left."

And, from the sound of it, Nibs sounds almost worried about that.

And from that, Baelfire is supposed to take away...what? That _He_ thinks Baelfire is some sort of pirate traitor, and is now thinking up some way to kill him?

* * *

He can't sleep that night, a combination of Nibs' words and Pags' snoring and perhaps the Island's own magic, finally taking its toll, keeping him awake.

Instead, after a few hours (is it hours, really, or days, or minutes?) he gets up and joins the older boys, the ones who've been in Neverland long enough and old enough to not care quite so much about things like sleep.

They're sitting around a campfire, mumbling to each other, when he approaches. As one, they seem to notice him, and instantly fall silent.

He almost turns around and leaves, almost makes up some excuse (almost demands to know what they're talking about, because his papa kept enough secrets from him to last a lifetime), but before he can say a word, one of the boys says, "Baelfire. Sit down before you catch a cold."

The boys laugh at this, for of course it is an impossible thing, to catch a cold in Neverland, and Baelfire blushes as he sits down on a log next to Nibs.

As if a spell has been broken, the boys go back to talking and laughing, and Baelfire realizes after a moment that they are talking of the Indians, the people that are never mentioned beyond having supplied the moccasins. He leans forward with interest, for he wants to know of these other people who live on the Island, these other people who don't have to be Lost Boys.

And recoils in the next moment, when he hears Felix's loud report. "We won the last battle, stole their moccasins and bows, so they're trying to recruit the Neverbeasts now. It's why those stupid Neverbears keep attacking us when we wander too far into the Neverforest."

He glances down at the moccasins on his feet, wondering if the hands that made them now lie cold and dead, and shudders.

"The Neverbeasts aren't that hard to fight," Rubio says, from the other side of Nibs. "But they're protected by the pixies."

There's a snort from behind Felix, and Baelfire looks up, recognizing that sound, though he's sure he hasn't heard it since...

"I'll take care of them," the boy who first spoke, who told him to sit down, says, and Baelfire is sure that his eyes are bugging out of his head.

Because he's seen this boy before, he knows this boy, but not as another one of the Lost Boys.

You!" Bae shouts, jumping to his feet.

And the other Lost Boys suddenly seem to vanish, letting him see clearly the boy sitting on the log behind Felix, the hood of his cloak down, but his shining eyes clearly visible beneath it.

A wooden pan pipe hangs from around the boy's neck, and Baelfire can almost hear its music. The boy underneath the hood gives him a long look before lifting his hood, giving Baelfire a view of the face that hasn't changed since the last time he saw it.

He has a sinking feeling, in the back of his mind, that he should have known.

The Piper grins at him, his eyes filled with mirth. "Hello, Baelfire."


	6. Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Inferno

_"In the middle of the journey of our life I found myself within a dark woods where the straight way was lost."_

-Dante's Inferno

"You!" Baelfire cires out, leaping to his feet, staring in horror, one finger lifting towards the object of the other boys' sudden glee.

Pan turns to face him, a grin splitting his lips even as they wrap around the pipe playing that horribly familiar music. The tune lilts through the air, drawing all the other boys around the fire in a mockery of what Baelfire had once seen, when he still lived with his Papa.

None of the other boys seem to notice that they were only sitting a moment ago, as they dance around the fire with abandon, even Nibs.

Baelfire stares, not certain whether he wants more to beat his fist into the other boy's face or run.

Running would be the cowardly thing to do, though, he knows, and Baelfire is not a coward.

He lunges, before he can stop himself, before his mind can catch up to the fact that Pan is clearly immortal, forever young, and that a punch isn't going to solve anything.

Hot rage courses through him, and all Baelfire can think is that this is his fault, that Pan started all of this, that Pan is the reason Baelfire finally chose his own life over his papa's destructive addiction to power, the reason he ended up in London with the Darlings, the reason the Shadow came to the Darlings' home and tried to take away Micheal and John, and instead took him. The reason Baelfire ever met Hook, and then ended up on the Island.

It's worthless, the punch, but it feels good. More than good, actually, to see the look of surprise on his face as Pan falls to the ground underneath Baelfire, as the Lost Boys stop their dancing to turn and stare in shock.

Someone comes forward - Baelfire thinks it's Felix - and pulls him off Pan in the next moment, but not before he can get in another punch.

It hurts to stop, even though he has no choice in the matter, and Baelfire's breaths come in ragged gasps as he is pulled away, wanting nothing more than to break free from Felix's grip and continue pummeling Pan.

Then he is dragged to his feet, and Pan ignores the helping hands of the other Lost Boys as he climbs to his feet himself, wiping off a bit of blood from his nose.

Baelfire stares at the blood, entranced. He's heard the saying, "If it can bleed, it can die," and, while he doesn't quite know if that's applicable here, it gives him something like a flicker of hope.

All at once, he can understand his papa's raw fury, the darkness raging underneath his skin and begging him to hurt, to kill, the ruthlessness that so terrified Baelfire before, the thing that his papa could never quell, no matter how much he loved Baelfire.

It scares him, that feeling, and Baelfire unclenches his bloodied fist, gasping. He wonders if the feeling scared his papa, too, in the beginning.

It was just a punch, his rational mind catches up with him, just a punch, nothing more.

But it felt like so much more.

He doesn't feel angry anymore; just scared, and somehow, at the same time, completely drained. He wants nothing more than to go back to his sleeping pad next to Pags and sleep for an enternity, wonders if he really wants to wake up from that sleep.

"Me," Pan says, smirking.

The Pied Piper, the other boys from Bae's village had called him, when Bae had the presence of mind to ask. His music seduced them from their homes, made them want to follow him. The others had gone with him, to become...Lost Boys.

Pan, Bae can remember Papa calling him now, where he couldn't before, his lips curling into an angry sneer just from saying that name.

Baelfire takes a step back, insides clenching, surprised when Felix lets go of him, surprised that Pan doesn't even seem angry. For the first time in a while, he finds himself wishing he had taken Hook up on his offer. Surely that would have been better, even if Hook had destroyed his family.

But...Papa had said that the Pied Piper was an enemy, not that he wanted to kill Rumpelstiltskin specifically, which Bae knows for a fact Hook wants to do. If this is the better of two evils, Bae thinks that perhaps he can cope.

Besides, he remembers Pan, too. Remembers that, for all of the evil that his papa claimed the immortal boy capable of, Pan had claimed that he hadn't been trying to hurt Baelfire. He'd only been trying to help him, to let him know how his papa felt about him.

With Hook, at least he knew what the pirate wanted, however misguided it was. Papa had never told Baelfire what the Pied Piper wanted; Bae had only deduced that the Piper wished to kidnap him.

"What..." he starts to say, and then stops himself, when he realizes that there are literally no words, that there is nothing caught in his throat but silence.

Pan gives him a long, assessing look, and Baelfire has the strange feeling that this isn't the first time its happened.

He shivers, pulling his arms around himself, though it isn't cold.

It never is, on Neverland.

The Lost Boys wait for a moment, and then Pan picks up the flute again, smirking at Baelfire as he plays a few notes into it, and the boys find themselves dancing around the fire once more, leaving two in their wake.

Baelfire stares after them, suddenly wishing he could join them rather than talk to Pan.

Suddenly, being cowardly is a far greater alternative to being...what he'd felt a moment before.

He doesn't think he ever wants to feel like that again, even if Pan deserved every punch he got.

"Don't you want to dance with the other boys, Baelfire?" Pan asks, voice at the same time innocent and mocking as he sits back down on a log. "When most boys hear this tune, they can't help themselves. But then, you already knew that, didn't you? It...used to effect you in the same way."

Baelfire's left foot smacks against an overturned log, and he sprawls onto the ground. He wants to deny the words, but, of course, there is no point. "What do you want with me?"

"I don't want anything from you, Baelfire," Pan shrugs, tooting out a few more notes on his pipe before looking up, meeting Baelfire's gaze. There is something fathomless in those eyes, something terrifying, something that makes Baelfire want to turn and run, as fast as he can. "It was you who were called to Neverland, after all. I should think that speaks for itself."

"Called?" Bae echoes.

Pan grins, standing up and walking over to where Baelfire is, squatting down in the dirt beside him. The pipe falls back against the older boy's chest, but Bae thinks he can still hear the tune, ringing over the campfire, and the boys do not stop their dancing.

"Yes, called. Like all the little boys who come to Neverland. Neglected, or orphaned, little boys who feel unloved. They come here, and I give them a real home. A home," he spreads his arms theatrically, "that can be anything you want, as long as you believe it. And little boys always have an imagination. Here, you never have to grow up."

 _"This could be your home...Just say the word."_

Pan grins again, reminding Bae of his papa's impish smile when he has reached the important clause of one of his deals, the clincher that will convince some poor soul to sign.

Bae glares up at him. The reminder of his father, abandoning him, is just what he needs to refuse the other boy. The reminder of what their life had been like-good- before the Piper, before the dagger.

"I don't want this to be my home, and I wasn't called here. I came because...I sacrificed myself to the shadow so that Wendy could live. Do you remember her? The girl you brought here?" he glances around. "I haven't seen any other girls yet."

Peter's eyes darken, almost imperceptibly. "That was...a mistake. It was always you I was after. Girls don't...well, they don't like it here, in Neverland, not usually. The girl was just a means to an end. At first, I didn't want you either, but then...I was hoping you were more...sacrificial than your father." A shrug. "Good thing, too."

"So you did want me, specifically," Bae challenges, hating the feel roiling in his gut at talking back to this boy. That's all he is; just a boy. A boy whose been here forever, and been a boy all that time. "For what?"

If Bae can believe whatever it is Pan says to this, perhaps he'll get through this night.

"You couldn't have come if you didn't hear the call to some extent, Baelfire. You haven't realized it yet, but you will."

"I had a family with the Darlings. I wasn't...lost. Not like these boys who you keep around like slaves!" Baelfire snaps.

"Hmm, quite the tongue on you. Nothing like your useless father. Cowardly, that one, always has been."

Bae jumps to his feet. "Don't talk about my papa like that!" he objects, but the words sound wooden on his tongue. Forced. Forced because he doesn't want to believe it true, and because he has defended his papa's cowardice since he was too young to understand what it meant.

"Oh?" Pan cocks an eyebrow. "So it is all well for you to scream coward at him and leave him in a magical world all alone, where his powers will eventually overtake his morality without anyone left to stop him, but the gods forbid if anyone else does?"

Bae's lower lip is trembling, and he hates the sign of weakness before this...creature. He doesn't even ask how Pan could know such a thing; he's too angry. "What. Do. You. Want. From. Me?"

"Well," Peter begins conversationally, picking up his pipe again, "I wanted your heart; the same reason I send the shadow after my Lost Boys. But, like all the rest, you haven't got it. I thought for sure this time, it would be you, especially considering...but it wasn't. So," he reaches out, pats Baelfire's knee before the younger boy can stop him, "you now have the honor of becoming a Lost Boy, along with all the others before you."

Bae grits his teeth, and struggles not to snort in derision. "I'm not one of your Lost Boys. I want to go home; send me back to the Darlings."

"S-Send you back?" Pan is struggling to withhold his laughter. "You want to go back? Baelfire, I don't think you understand what Neverland is. There's no way to get back; not like the way you came. You came here because you wanted to come here, after all."

"Your shadow..." Bae tries, weakly, wondering why Pan is still engaging him when he looks so annoyed by this conversation. He doesn't bother to argue about whether or not he really wanted to come here; he only thinks of Wendy's sweet face, wonders what little John or Micheal might have endured if he had let the Shadow take her brothers.

"Can only cross the realms for souls to bring back to Neverland. He can't return you; that isn't what he is." Pan sticks the pipe back in his mouth. "But you can learn to love it here, Bae. Believe it, remember?"

Then he is gone, skipping around the roaring fire with the other boys, and Bae is left alone to his thoughts on the log.

Far away, he thinks he can hear the merry sounds of pirates, aboard a ship on the ocean.

It is the first time he has heard that sound and wished to be there, rather than where he is.

* * *

"Why do you all...follow him?" Baelfire asks carefully, at nighttime, when the older boys are all still awake and the younger ones are in a troubled sleep, and Nibs glances up with a hooded look behind his eyes from where he is carving a piece of wood into something like the neverbear they fought...however long ago that was. Days? Weeks?

There's no singing around the bonfire tonight. Pan is angry about something, and so the other boys are all tense, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"Why wouldn't we?" Nibs asks, though he doesn't sound angry, only genuinely confused. He even sets down the neverbear, giving Baelfire his full attention as if he thinks Baelfire should have a good reason for his questions.

Baelfire bites his lip, glancing back at where Pan and Felix are engaged in some sort of fierce discussion, growing more heated by the minute.

"Well, I mean, you're all...you're all immortal here. What's so special about Pan?"

Nibs gives him a long look. "He's Pan," he says, as though that is answer enough.

"And that means..."

Nibs shrugs. "He's our leader," he says tightly. "He was here first, before any of us. He knows more about the Island than anyone. And...I trust him. He's never given us reason to doubt him."

"Never?" Baelfire echoes dubiously.

"Never," Nibs agrees, and then picks up the carved neverbear and walks away, joining the older boys in some sort of discussion about the mermaids.

They all seem so fascinated with the mermaids, after all.

Baelfire sighs, turning back to Pags, who is laying in dirt next to him, having fallen asleep hours ago, when Nibs first started carving.

He's been watching Pags carefully, when he isn't asking questions that no one seems to know the answer to.

Pags is the only one that seems to have had a life, before Neverland, besides himself, Adam and Tom, even though their lives seem slowly to be fading away. Which can't be possible, because the _pirate_ , Bae refuses to say his name, had claimed that no one grows any older on Neverland.

So the rest of the Lost Boys couldn't have been born here. They should remember _something_.

Nibs says he does, of course, but also that he chooses to forget it.

Baelfire would like to choose to forget how his papa abandoned him, but he doesn't really want to. Because forgetting that would mean forgetting coming to London, meeting the Darlings, becoming part of a real family, even if, in the end, he had to give that up, too.

He just doesn't understand how the Lost Boys can _choose_ to forget everything about their old lives, even if some parts of those lives were horrible.

Baelfire makes this accidental discovery on his third night on the island, curled up against a tree and wishing, not for the last time, that he was back in that room with the Darlings, and had had the good sense to shut the window before the Shadow attempted to snatch any of them away.

He's afraid he will never see the Darlings again.

He's afraid that, in time, he won't even remember them.

Needless to say, those thoughts aren't helping him sleep, and Bae shifts onto his right side, suddenly facing Pags. The fire has died down now, the last remnants a few glowing embers that waft smoke into the night air. Around it, the trees, shrouded in darkness, seem to bend lower, as if trapping the young boys in this shallow clearing.

Baelfire's eyes widen in alarm as they focus on Pags in the darkness.

Pags's face is twisted into an expression of pain; his eyes scrunched together while he clutches tightly to that stuffed bear.

He lets out a terrified whimper, and Bae is just reaching out to wake him from the nightmare when the boy whispers, "No, mama. No, please. I still remember, Mama, I promise."

Bae blinks.

"I still remember. You gave me Teddy for my birthday. I remember!"

Bae shakes the boy awake, and he cries out, stumbling back. "Wh..." he pauses when he sees his assailant. "What are you doing, Baelfire?"

"You were having a nightmare," Bae shrugs, not entirely sure why he bothered to wake Pags. Pags is one of his captors, one of the boys whose fault it is that he's here, in Neverland, instead of safe with the Darlings.

But...Pags reminds him a bit of Micheal, and he's been through enough nightmares-both real and in his dreams- that he wouldn't want anyone else to have to do the same if he had a chance to stop it.

"Oh." Pags sighs, rubbing at his eyes and glancing into the darkness of the clearing. "Was I loud?"

"No, I was still awake. But Pags..." he isn't sure what it is he wants to ask. He's already asked Tom, and gotten more of an answer than he ever wanted to hear, and he knows he doesn't really want to hear Pags' answer, either. Then, "Do you remember your family?"

"Sure," Pags grins. "They're still here, even if it's dark out, Baelfire," he says, as if Bae is a bit thick. "The Lost Boys."

"No," Bae shakes his head slowly. "No, your real family. Before the Lost Boys, before Neverland."

"But...this is my real family," Pags says, the confusion evident in his tone. "It's always been like that."

"Do you remember your mama and...father?" Baelfire tries again, a sense of horror filling him. He just manages to get the right word out, knowing that these other boys don't call their papa "papa," like in the Enchanted Forest.

Pags just blinks at him. After a moment, he yawns. "'Night, Bae," he whispers, and burrows back down into the dirt and his filthy brown blanket, that teddy bear pulled against his chest as if he is protecting it from an unseen enemy.

Bae does not sleep well that night. He is afraid to sleep again; afraid that, one day, like Pags, the only things real will be those in his dreams.

Of course, the last image he remembers seeing is his papa, letting him fall into the void, alone. Too real.

* * *

When Pan is with the Lost Boys, everything seems different. They are no longer the carefree bunch they were before, though they are certainly not as full of cares as Baelfire is.

He doesn't know if this is how it normally is with Pan's return, however, or if this is simply because of the attacks.

They remind him of an army now, rather than a group of children. Fighting off the neverbeasts that come too near to their encampment one at a time, with a skill and finesse and certain bloodlust that makes what Adam did to the neverbear seem paltry in comparison.

The Indians are convincing the neverbeasts to attack them, according to Pan, and they need to defend their camps from the neverbeasts at all costs, lest They come next.

Baelfire doesn't know if They are the Indians, but he finds himself almost hoping, from time to time, that they would hurry up and attack. And then he sees how, while the other lost boys kill the neverbeasts with handmade weapons and violence, Pan does it with magic.

The first time this happens, they're exploring with Pan, who seems to think they need a break from all of the fighting, and the neverbird attacks them. It's huge; the largest bird Baelfire has ever seen, with giant yellow claws and coal black eyes and feathers of so many colors he almost feels blind, staring at them.

"A nevermacaw," one of the boys breathes, sounding simultaneously horrified and awed.

Pan reaches for the knife on his belt, nodding to Felix, who pulls back an arrow on the string. The other boys move into various defensive positions, Nibs actually pushing Baelfire and Tom behind him.

Adam, Baelfire notices, is right in the thick of the fray, with the rest of the Lost Boys.

The nevermacaw stares at them with something like alarm at first, and then disinterest, reaching out and grabbing up the carving that Nibs had made, which is lying beside some of the other boys' things, with his long beak.

Nibs lets out a growling noise, the hand on his makeshift spear tightening.

Pan holds out a hand, warning him back, and Nibs sighs as Felix moves to strike the first blow.

The nevermacaw is not like the neverbear; unlike it, the bird has long, beautiful wings, and attempts to use them soon after it realizes that it's in trouble, jumping into the air, though it doesn't stay there for long.

Felix's arrow slams into it's hide, bringing it back down to the ground with a loud, ominous thud, and then the Lost Boys, save for Baelfire, move forward as one, crowding around it.

The beast isn't downed yet; it lays there, pretending death for a few moments, before lashing out with its claws at Nibs, who's gotten a little too close for comfort.

Nibs lets out a startled cry as the nevermacaw scratches too deeply into his leg, and falls to his knees, two other Lost Boys moving forward to pull him to safety as Pan moves forward, and, using a bit of rope that materializes out of nowhere to hold the bird down, straddles it.

He looks up a Slightly, and Baelfire does too, then, noticing the bloodlust that might just be fear in the other boy's eyes as he notches an arrow.

Nibs is still whimpering from where he lays on the ground, and Baelfire moves forward instinctively, though he doubts he will be much help, kneeling down beside the other boy and pulling a bit of cloth off of his arm to wrap it around the wound.

He grimaces as he sees the blood; he's never liked the sight of blood, not on people he cares about, not on boots, or weapons, but he quickly swallows down the bile in his throat as he wraps the injury, and Nibs gives him something like a relieved smile.

They both turn back then, staring at the nevermacaw, Nibs with fascination, Baelfire with fascinated horror, and, as he watches Slightly's hands begin to quiver, even as he raises the arrow for a second time.

Pan is grinning from where he sits atop the nevermacaw, ignoring the creature's pained whimpers, staring at Slightly as he waits for the younger boy to put an end to it.

And Baelfire has a sudden vision of his papa, grinning with excitement just before he turns a man into a snail, just before he steps on it.

He thinks of his papa, of the blood on the man's boots as he returned from dealing with their maid, the lack of remorse in his eyes as he joked about how they would need a new one. About the time he had watched from afar, his papa not having realized that Baelfire was there, as he killed a fairy all for the sake of stealing her wand. Of the look of glee in his papa's eyes as he had butchered the creature.

And, almost before he realizes what he's saying, Baelfire is screaming, "Let it go!" and Tom is looking at him in alarm, the other Lost Boys with something like anger.

But they ignore him, as though he hasn't spoken, and Tom pushes him down onto the ground, on his back.

Except, one person hasn't ignored him.

Slightly is shaking like a leaf, perspiration on his brow, his hands shaking wildly as he attempts to control them, attempts to shoot the arrow.

"Kill it," Pan snaps in obvious irritation, and Slightly shakes his head.

"But..." Slightly's lower lip quivers. "But, it's..."

"Kill it!"

Slightly swallows hard, but lets the arrow fly.

Baelfire glances away, grimacing, wincing as he hears the sound of the beast sliding to the ground anyway.

When he looks back, Pan is towering over Slightly, who takes a step back before Pan grabs him by the collar.

" _Never_ question me again," Pan hisses, twisting Slightly's collar before abruptly shoving him backward, and Baelfire has a feeling that he's not only talking to Slightly.

Slightly nods furiously, stumbling back against the nearest tree.

Baelfire doesn't realize until that moment that he is holding his breath, but he lets it out slowly as Pan turns on Nibs, still sitting on the ground, clutching his leg.

Pan reaches for the flask hanging over his shoulder that Baelfire has had yet to notice until now, and unscrews it, and Baelfire watches with the same strange fascination as the other Lost Boys as the water pours out over Nibs' injured leg, over the cloth that Baelfire had bound around it.

It isn't quite as fascinating to see that Nibs is healed, when they can't see the wound itself, but, by the relieved gasp that Nibs gives out, Baelfire can tell that the water has worked its magic.

And then, to his surprise, the nevermacaw forgotten as it dissolves into purple dust and vanishes into thin air, the Lost Boys crowd around Pan, some of them jumping up and down in their excitement, trying to pry the flask of water from his fingers.

Pan laughs, handing it to Pags first, and says, "All right, all right, here you go."

Baelfire watches as they drink the water, but, when the flask is passed to him, he feels something like a spark as it touches his fingers, a spark of magic, everything within him fighting against the feeling, as he has trained himself to do ever since witnessing his papa's use of magic. Also, he's not sick, so he doesn't understand why he would need some, anyway.

He hisses, ignoring the look Adam sends his way as he pretends to take a sip and then passes it behind him, to Curly.

When all of the boys have drunk their fill, save for a few of the younger ones, they start clamoring around Pan, begging for more.

Baelfire's brows furrows at this, for none of the boys are sick, surely, and yet they seem to be dying of thirst, the way they plead.

He's suddenly rather relieved that he didn't drink the water.

"Tell you what," Pan says agreeably, and Baelfire instantly finds himself suspicious of that agreeable tone, "I'll go and fetch us some more."

And with that, to Baelfire's shock, the immortal boy leaps into the air, and flies, up, up, and out of the trees, into the open sky to the West.

"He's...flying!" Adam breathes, and Baelfire can't bring himself to respond, to do anything more than stare with a wide open mouth.

"I wanna do that!" Tom calls out in the next breath, and, for the first time, Baelfire can't bring himself to judge that, to judge that flying is a bad thing, a magical thing.

Because a part of him very much would like to fly, too, though he doubts that it is for the same reasons as Tom.

Pan lets out a whoop, and then turns on an angle, floating up toward the sky as though it's as easy as breathing. He disappears, a few moments later, over the Neverforest, but Baelfire can't bring himself to wonder where the immortal boy is going, not now.

"How is that possible?" Baelfire asks Nibs, who laughs at the question, but Baelfire bravely goes on. "I've...seen other magical beings, before Neverland. None of them could fly." His papa could move himself anywhere he wished, provided it was a place of magic, but he couldn't _fly_ , not like this. "Is he...is Pan part fairy?"

Nibs chortles at that, slapping his knee as if this is the funniest thing he's ever heard. Perhaps it is.

"No," he says finally, wiping at his eyes as if he can't help himself. "No, Pan isn't part-fairy. He...It's pixie dust, is all."

"Pixie dust?" Baelfire echoes, having never heard of the stuff.

Nibs grins at him. "Yeah. There's pixies on the far side of the Island. Treacherous little creatures, but they shed magical dust, and, if you can collect enough of it, you can fly."

Baelfire's breath catches in his throat. "How high?" he asks, and Nibs gives him an incredulous look.

"As high as you like," Nibs says with a shrug. "Why should height matter?"

Baelfire has an idea that magic has certain limitations, but those words give his sudden hope a boost. If Pan can fly, as high as he likes, then he's lying about being able to leave Neverland.

And if he's lying, then he isn't good, no matter what he may be trying to convince Baelfire of.

And if he's lying, then Baelfire _can_ get back to the Darlings, because if Pan can fly with stolen pixie dust, so can Baelfire.

* * *

He knows that, if all of the other boys are so awed by Pan being able to fly, then the pixie dust can't just be found anywhere, but he has to try.

In that vein, he goes off by himself, making some excuse to a suspicious Pags that he needs to be alone for a while.

He doesn't know how long he walks, searching in odd places - behind toad stools, which his papa has told him are magical, or in some of those strange caves that Pan doesn't like the boys to explore too much - but, soon enough, the sky is dark as he trudges across the rocky beach.

He sees the pirate's ship in the bay, and swallows hard at the sight of it, but reminds himself, where, days ago, he had wanted to go back to it, that it was the pirate who handed him over to the lost boys to begin with.

"Hello, Baelfire," a familiar voice says, and Baelfire jumps, spinning around just in time to watch Pan land on one of the rocks with an ease that makes his papa's use of magic look foolish in comparison.

He didn't expect Pan to land next to him, when there was no one else about, and something about the thought of being alone with Pan makes Baelfire shiver and he has to force himself not to reach for the nearest twig that might be used as a weapon.

It won't make a difference, anyway, not if Pan can do to humans what he did to the neverbird.

"Enjoying yourself, Baelfire?" Pan asks, his lips quirking oddly.

Baelfire gives him a long look, and then grunts in defeat. "No," he says, and then winces at how petulant he sounds.

Pan laughs. "Well, let me give you a hint. You're not going to find pixie dust around here."

Baelfire sighs.

"Come back to the fire," Pan offers then, voice annoying magnanimous, and holds out a hand, gesturing back toward the camp, where the other lost boys still are.

"You didn't have to kill the nevermacaw," Baelfire says softly, and Pan shoots him a look.

"I didn't," he says, lips twitching into something like a smirk.

Baelfire flinches. "But-"

"Baelfire, this is our island. This island belongs to the Lost Boys, and to me. It's our home. Those neverbeasts...they're trying to destroy our home." He bites his lip, and then, "I'm not going to let them do that."

He knows it's a loosing battle; this conversation is so reminiscent of the many he's had with his papa of the same vein that he can't possibly believe otherwise, but he does anyway.

"It was an innocent. It didn't mean to hurt Nibs, it was just scared!"

Pan gives him a long, bemused look, suddenly too close for Baelfire's comfort. "I was scared, when I first came to Neverland. Anyway, it doesn't matter. It was just a creature."

He turns then, clearly signifying that the conversation is over, moving back toward the camp. And then, he stops abruptly, spinning back to Baelfire with a wicked grin on his face, holding up the flask of water that the other boys are so obsessed with.

"Would you like some water, Baelfire?"

Baelfire shakes his head, for there's a new purpose to his questions now, and pretends to ignore the way that Pan looks almost disappointed at his refusal.

"Why are you so interested in me?" Baelfire asks, before he can filter himself, as he knows he should have.

Pan raises an eyebrow. "How do you know I have any more interest in you than any other lost boy? You're all mine. I have to look out for you."

Baelfire snorts. "Easy. You haven't paid half so much attention to Tom and Adam as you have me. So what is it you really want from me?"

Pan shrugs. "I told you, I thought you were the right one."

"But you don't now, so what is it?" Baelfire demands, tired of talking in circles. It reminds him of his papa's penchant for deals, for skirting around the salient issue in a way that could never make him a liar.

Pan shrugs. "Tom and Adam are from a world without magic. Everything they see here is new and exciting, just like almost every other lost boy. You...you know what it's like, to live in a world with magic. I find that interesting."

"Yeah, I did. The world you first saw me in, where my papa was." He pauses. "My papa told me not to trust you," Baelfire says, eyes narrowing, even as Pan giggles at the words. "He said you were close when you were little, and you betrayed him."

This time, Pan laughs outright. "Is that what he told you?" another chuckle, this one almost mirthless. "Do you always believe everything he tells you? Well, I guess that shouldn't surpirse either of us. Rumpel always was one for lies that suited him."

Baelfire tilts his head, glares at the other boy. "What do you mean?" he demands, thinking horribly of the lie he's lived his whole life with, the lie that a pirate had killed his mama.

Pan shrugs. "Oh, just that, he promised to come with you to the land without magic, didn't he? And he lied about that."

"How do you know about that?"

Pan gives him a grin, his voice taking on an almost sadistic pleasure at the confusion in Baelfire's eyes as he continues. "He lied about killing your mother," and now his face takes on a sickening smirk, "crushing her heart in his hands, _laughing_ , and he had the audacity to tell you she was dead, didn't he? And...the Pirate Captain. He lied about a lot of things, didn't he?"

Baelfire shivers despite himself. "I don't want to talk about that," he grits out, and Pan gives him a searching look.

"No, I don't suppose you would," he says finally. "The point is, Baelfire, all grown ups are like that. We can't trust a single one of them. But," and now his face is full of understanding, of compassion, and that seems even more sickening, on this young, happy face, "we can trust each other. We're all boys here, and there's not a single grown up for miles to tell us what to do."

"How do I know I can trust you?" Baelfire asks.

Pan gives him a pained smile. "Have I ever lied to you, Baelfire? I seem to remember trying to show you the truth once, about your papa. You stayed with him, though, even when I was offering you," his arms stretch out, seeming to encompass the whole of Neverland, "all of this. I only wanted to help, to spare you. I didn't want you to have to suffer that, Baelfire. You could have come here a long time ago."

Baelfire swallows hard. He's almost taken in by the other boy; he wants desperately to believe him, to believe that this could be a fresh start, that he doesn't have to deal with men like his papa and Hook here again, and yet, something is holding him back, and it is not just his aversion to magic, magic which he knows this immortal is just as capable of as his papa.

There is something else, just at the corner of his mind.

"How did you betray my papa?"

And Pan's face hardens as he jumps to his feet, pulling out that pipe again, and, in lieu of an answer, bringing it to his lips.

The tune lulls the Lost Boys back into their dance, loud and hypnotic, and Baelfire stares at the bonfire longingly, a question at the back of his mind, but the only important question is just in front of him.

Why isn't he joining in?

The tune gets louder, clouding through all of his muddled thoughts, seeming to enter into his very soul, and Baelfire has almost forgotten the conversation with Pan. Or, at least, the end of it.

He knows that there is something wrong, but Baelfire is lulled by the music just like every other abandoned child, and he stands to his feet, not noticing Pan's grin as he joins the swell of dancers.

He has a dream, that night. About a girl he can hardly remember, who lives in a grand palace and tells the most wonderful fairy tales. He hovers outside of her bedroom window as she tells them to her brothers, the vague realization that he is flying somewhere at the back of his mind as he listens, entranced.

She glances up, eyes wide as they make contact with him, and then she jumps to her feet, running forward and sticking her head out of the window.

Baelfire reels back, frightened by the recognition in her eyes, and the relief, and the fear.

"Baelfire," she breathes excitedly, and it is on the tip of his tongue to ask how she knows his name when she demands, "Are you coming back now? Coming home?"

He blinks at her. "I am home," he says, with a sort of resigned determination, and the world of clock towers and palaces dissolves around them, and he is standing in the middle of the Neverforest, blinking in the harsh sunlight.

It doesn't bother him, that he can't remember who this girl is, or why she seems to know him. Instead of worrying over it, he flies over the trees of the Neverforest, free as a bird.

The Piper's music plays while he flies, and he's lulled into waking by it the next morning.


	7. Flight of Madness

_"The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it."_

-Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie

Baelfire runs. He knows it is foolish, knows that at any moment now, one of Pan's boys will come after him and drag him back to the camps. Knows that, if they fail, Pan will simply send the Shadow after him, which has an almost human loyalty to Pan, and, truly, Baelfire has nowhere to go. That he's known this from the moment he step foot on this Island, and that this can only end badly.

But he has to try anyway, because to do otherwise will only seal his fate with a creature who once tried to lure him away from home to begin with, who will make him forget everything soon enough, even if it means incurring Pan's wrath.

And he can't forget.

He questions, even as he runs, why he even bothers to; why he wants to remember all of that, the pain and the suffering, the abandonment and betrayal that he felt at the hands of two men he'd thought he could trust, the evilness of magic and the sensation of being ripped away from his world.

But then he thinks of the Darlings, and of the magic Pan must possess, and has his resolve once more.

He cannot forget the happiest memory of his life. He simply cannot, no matter how many times the other boys tell him that he will just be happy if he gives up such memories, if he participates as a Lost Boy with them.

Nothing will matter, then.

But if Baefire knows anything, it is that the impossible can happen, especially in Neverland.

So he runs.

He hasn't really noticed how dark the Neverforest is, even in the daytime, until this moment, when he runs through it and can hardly see more than outlines of the trees around him, of his own hand, in front of his face.

He hates darkness.

It isn't long, though, before he realizes that he doesn't know if he's making his way deeper into the Neverforest, or toward the shoreline. He remembers the Pirate, teaching him about the stars a little, about how to use them to make sense of his location, like a compass, but he can't see the stars from below the tree tops, for a thick layer of green hides them from him.

Baelfire skids to a halt, swallowing hard.

He can't go back there; he knows he can't. He has to figure out where he is, has to find a way.

There's a noise below him, and he blinks, reaching for the sharpened stick he's carrying, though he knows it will hardly be a formidable weapon against any real foe.

But there is nothing there; nothing but a bright purple flower, its many petals almost seeming to reach out to him in that moment, and he tilts his head, considering it, for it seems rather strange for a flower to be where it is, planted between two narrow rows of trees.

He shakes his head, telling himself that he is quite paranoid.

The flower sneezes at him, then, and Baelfire blinks at it in surprise, not really sure what to make of a flower that sneezes, such a human sound coming from it.

But he can't afford to get distracted, even if he knows he should be wondering _why_ a flower is sneezing, and so he keeps going.

That is, until one of the vines from a nearby tree reaches out and snatches him back, throwing him against the ground with a loud thump, tangling around his ankle.

Baelfire swears, another word he's learned from Starkey, and reaches out desperately in an attempt to pull the vine off, but this only causes it to tighten, interfering with the circulation in his leg. He winces at the sudden pain, groping around on the dark forest floor for something to wedge in between his ankle and the vine, in the hopes of freeing himself.

 _"You've just gotta think of it, and you'll have it,"_ Pags' voice whispers in his mind, and Baelfire blinks.

He closes his eyes, imagining in his mind a knife in the same way that he first imagined that piece of lamb, half-hoping it will work, the other half of his mind screaming at him that this is much different than a piece of food, that Pags warned him that such things weren't the same.

When he opens his eyes, he realizes that his more rational mind has won out, as it is wont to do.

His hands are empty.

He sighs; it is what he expected, he supposes; he is not with the other Lost Boys, and the magic of their existence has completely worn off, by now.

He starts to jog forward then, because he thinks he can hear the noises of other boys hooting behind him, unless that is simply a neverowl, and he needs to find the beach as soon as possible.

And then the tree in front of him bends, moving down _toward_ him, it's branches reaching out as though to envelope him in an almost human embrace. He ducks and rolls out of the way, lurching to his feet and brandishing the sharpened stick.

The tree cackles, branches moving out to ensnare Baelfire where they were too far away to do so a moment before, and that is when Baelfire realizes it.

The Island is just as alive as Pan.

He has just a moment to come to this conclusion, before the branches wrap around his waist and swing him toward the nearest tree, before he can shimmy out of their embrace. He cries out, lifting his hands in an attempt to shield himself, even as he knows its hopeless. The stick is wrested from his grip by another branch, falling uselessly to the ground.

His head smacks against the tree trunk, and his world goes completely dark in the next moment, despite all efforts to fight the encroaching darkness.

* * *

 _Hours earlier..._

"Come on, boys!" Pan crows loudly, suddenly raising off the ground and into the air, a swirl of yellow magic following him. "Let's go a-hunting!"

The Lost Boys cheer, but Baelfire only blinks in confusion, wondering why they need to go hunting when they can just imagine any type of food that they want.

He can remember Pags saying that they sometimes imagined up great feasts, sitting around the bonfire and eating all night.

Perhaps, as with the treasure hunt, it's merely the thrill of doing something fun and adventurous, of doing something for themselves, rather than allowing magic to do it.

And so he, like most of the other boys, save for a few who elect to go on an adventure to find Slightly's missing watch, and the rest, who want to sleep, go hunting with Peter Pan.

Still, he has a bad feeling about this.

They've been walking for some time, Peter flying ahead and sometimes coming back to check on them, have been walking longer than Baelfire thinks is possible for such a small island, and he begins to wonder if they aren't walking in circles by the time the wall of trees breaks, and the Lost Boys find themselves standing in front of a large stone mountain, which seems to go up into the very clouds, and last in either direction forever.

Pan comes back down then, landing gracefully in front of them, and grins. "Well, we can't go hunting unless we get over it," he says, in what Baelfire assumes is meant to sound like an encouraging tone.

Several of the boys, Tootles and Curly chief among them, start to grumble under their breath, but, a moment later, Baelfire jerks in surprise, watching as the boys lift into the air with the same ease as Peter, going higher and higher until they, too, disappear above the cloud line.

Within moments, only he, Peter, and two other Lost Boys remain on the ground; Tom and Adam.

Baelfire is almost ashamed to realize he had not even noticed that Adam and Tom went with them on the hunting trip until this moment.

Tom is staring up at the clouds in awe. Baelfire is worried to note that Adam looks just as excited.

"...How do we do that?" Tom demands presently, turning to Pan.

Pan laughs, a high, musical sound that seems to fill the air like the mermaids' at the lagoon. "Easy enough. A little of this," he unwinds a small, clear bottle full of white dust from around his neck, holding it out to Tom, "And thinking happy thoughts, and it happens almost naturally. Just...steer, when you get up there."

Tom frowns disbelievingly at him, reaching out and taking the little bottle from Pan's willing hands, shaking it in the air.

Pan laughs, taking it back and uncorking it. "Ready?" he asks, and Tom nods eagerly.

Baelfire watches as Pan sprinkles the stuff over the Lost Boy, slightly incredulous as the boy lifts into the air almost immediately. He flails for a moment, catching his bearings before braining himself against the stone wall looming ahead of them, and then flying up to presumably meet the other Lost Boys.

Adam is next, and, though it takes him a bit longer than Tom, he too flies off into the sky with relative ease.

"And how about you, Baelfire?" Pan asks, sounding almost taunting as he hands Baelfire the bottle. "Are you brave enough to fly, too, or do you want to go back?"

Baelfire eyes the bottle wearily. He doesn't like being alone with Pan, and they both know it. "What's in it?" he asks, trying not to sound too distrusting, even if he already knows the answer, but Pan's face falls all the same.

"Just some dust," Pan reassures. "Pixie dust." And, at Baelfire's continued hesitation, "It's the only way to fly here, Baelfire."

Baelfire swallows, reaching out and taking a bit of the stuff, sprinkling it over his head and shoulders, as he had watched Tom and Adam do.

He pauses for a moment, waiting, but nothing happens.

Frustrated, he glances up at Pan, who is giving him a sad smile.

"Did you forget the last part of the puzzle, Baelfire?" And, at Baelfire's confused look, "You have to think of happy thoughts, to fly."

Baelfire gulps, closing his eyes and thinking of his life with the Darlings, of how happy he'd been with them, with a real family that truly seemed to care about him, that gave him a home and asked for nothing in return, that he would have been happy to live out the rest of his life with.

He opens his eyes, glancing down, part of him expecting to be looking only at puffy white air.

But there's nothing but brown dirt and green grass beneath him, along with a few loose rocks.

He glances at Pan, and the other boy sighs. "Happy thoughts, Baelfire. The happiest you have."

Baelfire blinks at those words. He's been laboring under the assumption - for some time, in fact - that his time with the Darlings was the happiest moment of his life, and he doesn't understand why this didn't work, unless it was his veering off into what had happened next, into the fact that he _wasn't_ able to live out the rest of his life with them.

That must be it.

He closes his eyes again, this time thinking of only one specific moment; of Wendy, introducing him to the rest of the Darling family, of them accepting him and asking him to live with them, as if he were one of their own.

Again, he opens his eyes.

Again, it is only to find the dirt and grass beneath him.

He sighs, slumping a little now. Evidently, the magic dust didn't work for him as it did the other boys.

"You're just not thinking hard enough," Pan starts, and Baelfire is too frustrated to remember that he's half-afraid of Pan.

"Well, what's your happy memory then?" he snaps, causing Pan to blink and take a half-step back. There's surprise on the older boy's face, surprise too deep for just those challenging words to be the cause of it, and some other emotion that Baelfire can't identify, before it goes away.

Then Pan smirks. "The first time I realized I was going to be young forever," he says, and Baelfire blinks at that. "And that I'd get to stay here, too, ruling Neverland not tied down by anything or anyone from another world, free."

He knows that the Lost Boys don't age, that no one here does, no matter how long they stay, and yet, he wouldn't think a child would find that to be their happiest memory. It seems too...grown up a thought, though he can't put his finger quite on why he thinks this way.

"When did you figure that out?" he asks, wondering how old, exactly, Pan is. He has a feeling that Pan has been here much longer than the other boys, which would explain why they all follow him so easily.

And, sometimes, there is something about his eyes which seems...older, somehow, than any adolescent boy's eyes should be.

His eyes are like that now, even as he gives Baelfire a rather fake laugh.

"Oh, I've no idea. I only remember the moment it happened. Happy memories are always like that, you see. I used to think I'd been living in Neverland for thousands of years but..." and now his sharp gaze is assesing, looking Baelfire over, for what, he can't guess. "Now, I don't think it's been nearly so long."

He hesitates, for a moment, and it is the first time Baelfire has ever seen him looking slightly uncertain. "Maybe it'll just take you longer to find your happy memory than it did me."

"And everyone else," Baelfire mutters resentfully, thinking of how easily Tom and Adam had lifted into the air.

That elicits a small chuckle from Pan. "Well, in the mean time, I suppose I could carry you. If you still want to hunt. The boys are probably getting far ahead of us, by now."

Baelfire raises a brow. "Carry me?" he echoes, glancing up at the tall mountain, thinking that, while it was all well and good to fly into the air when you knew you could stay up, it was something entirely different to be held by someone else, knowing that, at any moment, they could drop you and you'd go plummeting to your death...

Pan seems to realize his fears in the next moment. "I won't drop you Baelfire," he looks rather amused, and Baelfire scowls.

No matter that the music of the Pied Piper has lulled him into the world that is Neverland, and that Pan has promised never to lie to him.

He still doesn't trust the boy who shouldn't still be a boy, who has a darkness in his eyes that sometimes reminds Baelfire of the darkness in his papa.

"Fine," he grits out, though what he really wants to say is, "Sod off," and Pan laughs, as if he realizes this, before grabbing Baelfire by the arm.

Baelfire tenses, and the two boys exchange a long, searching look.

"Do you trust me, Baelfire?" Pan asks, and, before he can stop himself, Baelfire shakes his head. Pan's lips quirk ruefully. "Well, trust me not to drop you. I haven't hurt you yet, have I?"

And Baelfire thinks of his papa, of how he dropped Baelfire into the portal, alone.

A moment later, they are in the air.

A moment later, Baelfire can almost forget that this is Pan carrying him through the skies, that he has every reason not to trust Pan, and that he's wary of this Island and its magic, because he's _flying_.

Really flying, in the air, high above the ground.

He lets out a shout that he isn't sure is fear, and isn't sure is excitement, and, above him, Pan laughs, before pulling them into a long, sudden dive that has Baelfire screaming, as they fall toward Mermaid Lagoon, despite the fact that the Lagoon is rather far from where their camp was, the mermaids sticking their heads out of the water to blink up at the boys before disappearing beneath the dark waters once more.

Baelfire's scream doesn't stop until Pan abruptly pulls up, yanking them in another direction, and Baelfire blinks.

"Where are we going?" he asks, wondering why the other Lost Boys aren't with them. But then, that might merely be because of Pan's crazy stunts, or the older ones might already know where they're going.

Pan doesn't answer, and Baelfire sighs, wondering if his shout can't be heard over the rush of wind.

It's a strange sensation, flying, and not at all what he'd been expecting, moments earlier, when he'd been remembering his first stint at flying, with the Shadow carrying him. Surprisingly, he doesn't feel nauseous about how high up he is, when, while he was on the Pirate's ship, he couldn't stand climbing the mast. Rather, he feels exhilarated.

The air feels light and heavy around him, and, though they are speeding through it so fast that Baelfire's stomach seems to have ended up in his throat, his eyes are open, and don't seem bothered by the wind coming straight at them. Instead, he opens them wide, staring at anything and everything in view, and can't stop the crow of happiness that bursts forth from him.

He feels as though Pan is his wings, carrying him, and almost doesn't notice the other boy's presence beyond that. He is free, in this moment, free as a bird, and he can see the whole Island now, can see everything where he couldn't, on the ground.

He finds himself wondering how he could ever have considered himself living before this moment.

It's an entirely different feeling from when the Shadow had him; then, he was far too frightened to focus on the fact that he was flying, far too intent on getting away from the clearly malicious creature.

Now, though, he can close his eyes and feel the wind running through his hair, can smell the salt from the sea, and the Shadow isn't holding him up, dragging him along unwillingly. At least he knows what's going on, this time, and that seems to make all of the difference.

The Island is far larger than he thought it, before this moment. It seems to stretch on forever, though he can see the waters surrounding it on almost every side. And there is far more to it than he once thought.

He can see caves and cliffs and inland lakes that he hasn't explored yet, despite the Lost Boys' extensive explorations of the Island, and he can also see places he's already been, like Cannibal Cove. He sees, at one point, a large tree standing by itself, the other trees of the Neverforest almost purposefully pulling back around it, as though they can sense that it stands alone.

He wonders if this is Pan's Thinking Tree, but his thoughts are soon caught up by another sight, as they pass over a large mountain.

"What's that?" he shouts to Pan, pointing. "It looks like some sort of settlement!"

He can see large, triangular animal skin tents, like the kind the soldiers used during the Ogre Wars, perched up on a spot of land that is rather similar to a cliff, dozens of them littering it, and the spot looks very much isolated compared to the rest of the Island. He thinks its rather far away from where they are currently, but he can almost see the tiny dots of what might be people walking about.

He can feel Pan's grip on him stiffen, at the question. "Never mind that," he says, with a shrug that makes Baelfire fearful that he's going to drop him. "It's just the Indians."

"The Indians?" Baelfire asks, but Pan falls into another dive then, one, Baelfire suspects, that he did on purpose, to distract him, and he drops the subject.

They fly on for a while longer, in relative silence beyond Pan's frequent crowing, until Baelfire thinks of another pertinent question, the novelty of flying having begun to wear off.

"What are we hunting?" he calls out, not sure if Pan has heard him until he responds. "And why can't we just imagine it?"

"Something delicious," Pan shouts in his ear. "And because we can!"

That's hardly an answer at all, but Baelfire does not get the chance to protest, for suddenly they are landing gently on the ground alongside the other Lost Boys, some of whom are still flailing through the air, like Tom and Adam.

They are standing on a narrow plateau beside a river, the same one, Baelfire thinks, that must empty into Cannibal Cove, for its too wide to drizzle off into the ground. The high mountains, the only thing Baelfire truly knew about, before flying, but had yet to explore, surround them, and he gazes around in wonder.

In the village where he lived with his papa, close enough to the sea that the land was made of meadows and forests, but no high ground, Baelfire had never seen anything quite like these mountains. When he came to live with the Darlings, he could see mountains outside the drawing room window, far in the distance, but they were far too distanced from London to consider exploring.

These mountains seem ominous, dark and winding, like one could get lost in the caves and trails between them for years, and so Baelfire has had yet to explore here, though he knows that the other Lost Boys stay well away, as well.

"Crocodile Creek," a voice says to his left, and Baelfire jumps, spinning. He hadn't noticed Nibs sneaking up beside him; Pan is already with Felix and the other boys, ignoring him now as he usually does, and he can see Pags leading Tom over to the water, to drink.

"Huh?" he says, intelligently.

Nibs snorts. "The name of the river. It's really a river, I know, but it's always been called Crocodile Creek."

Baelfire shivers, wondering why the name feels like it should mean something to him. "Who named it?" he asks, and Nibs just shrugs.

"It's been named for as long as I can remember," he says. "Longer than I've been here, I think. Maybe even longer than Pan."

Baelfire raises an eyebrow, wondering why Nibs is telling him all of this. "Are we fishing?" he asks, and he remembers fishing, with his papa, so long ago.

Nibs shakes his head. "Come on," he says, and Baelfire realizes that the other boys are already moving away, following the stream up into the craggy mountains, Pan ignoring Baelfire entirely now.

He wonders if that is on purpose, and then wonders why he cares.

They walk for some time, through the craggy caverns of the mountains, following the stream in relative silence, except for the occasional hoot from one of the Lost Boys, or Pan saying something about them being near.

He wonders why they didn't just keep flying to wherever it is they're going, though he supposes they could not have easily navigated the sharp mountains.

And then, he sees her.

They turn a corner, and suddenly there she is; she's sitting on a rock, not so far from the stream, her back turned to them, her little wings splayed out in front of her; she appears to be...grooming them, and Baelfire wonders if all fae groom their wings.

Pan moves in front of the other boys, putting a finger to his lips. He's moving forward then, smirking, and Baelfire feels a sickening feeling in his gut, knows that something _wrong_ is about to happen.

Pan is almost on top of her when he appears to change his mind. Blinking, he turns back to Slightly, the boy Baelfire remembers had such a hard time with this...last time, and grins.

The little creature seems to notice them, then; she spins around, but it's already too late. A trap made of ropes falls on top of her, surrounding her, pining her to the rock, her little wings vainly trying to lift the trap from her, from where Curly has dropped it from above. It is a perfect cage, for the little fae.

"Slightly?" Pan says, waving a hand extravagantly, though his meaning could not be more clear.

Slightly takes a step forward, and then hesitates.

"What are they...?" some part of him knows already, but he asks anyway.

Beside him, Nibs shrugs. "She's a pixie," he says finally, in a hushed tone, as if that should explain everything.

It doesn't. "And?"

Are they going to kill her, too? For she hadn't been attacking them, hadn't even seemed worried until the moment they trapped her.

"Her dust," Nibs explains, eying him as if he thinks Baelfire is a bit thick. "On her wings. It's what makes us fly."

He looks then, really looks.

Her wings are half-covered by the ropes, of course, but he can see the sparkling yellow-and-white dust on them, shimmering in the air around her with each movement, all the same. There is something enchanting about them, something that almost calls him toward the dust without him even realizing his feet are moving.

Nibs smirks.

"You won't get away with this, Pan," she hisses, and Pan's grin widens.

She reminds him a bit of the Rheul Gorm, the blue light emanating off of her not the only reason for that; there is a certain tranquility in her expression, despite her situation, a magic that flows from her and makes him feel almost peaceful.

His papa's magic had never quite accomplished that.

"Won't I?" he asks, sounding more amused than anything. "Who's going to save you now?"

The pixie lifts her chin defiantly. "No one will save me," she says, sounding resigned. "But someone will defeat you, eventually. I hope the rest of my sisters live to see that day."

Save her? Baelfire glances at Nibs, almost unconsciously, looking for an explanation.

Nibs looks almost reluctant to speak, this time, but Baelfire notices that even Tom is looking in their direction for an answer. "Taking their dust...it well, it kills them. It doesn't hurt them, but it does kill 'em," he says, rather bluntly when he finally manages to admit it.

Baelfire sucks in a breath, watching as Slightly moves forward with a little, clear empty canister.

"No, this is wrong," he whispers, and Adam, who has moved to stand by Tom, elbows him. Hard.

"Shut up, Baelfire," he snaps, moving in front of him to get a better look at the pixie.

Slightly kneels beside the pixie's rock and reaches out a finger, pushing it through the ropes binding her, scraping dust off of one of the pixie wings with it, ignoring the pleading, though silent, look that the pixie is sending his way.

And Pan is grinning.

And then Slightly's finger stops moving, and he freezes, looking horrified. He reels back, dropping the canister. The few bits of dust which have already fallen into it hit the ground with a soft thud.

"Slightly!" Pan shouts, but the other boy just sits there, nor acknowledging him at all, shaking like a leaf.

"I...I..." the boy is whispering, over and over again, and Baelfire stares, transfixed. If he didn't know better, he would almost say...

"I remember," Slightly cries out, as if the sudden realization physically shocks him. And then again. "I remember!"

Pan freezes, looking actually nervous then, and something in Baelfire's mind clicks at the sight.

He doesn't want them to remember. And the great Pan is actually scared of what would happen if they did.

"My mother," Slightly whispers. "She wouldn't want me..."

And Pan leans forward, pressing his advantage. "No, she didn't want you, Slightly. That's why you're here. With us, you're new family."

Slightly shakes his head, pulls away. "She wouldn't want me to do this! She'd be...ashamed of what I've done."

Pan raises an eyebrow, though Baelfire sees the subtle twitch in his cheek that gives him away. "Who cares?" he asks, his voice a carefully controlled casual. "You have us now, why should you care what she thinks?"

Slightly shivers. "Because...because she's my mother."

Pan laughs. "But she didn't want you, and we do. So why should you listen to her instead of me?"

Slightly's brows furrow. "Well," he finally says, "Because she was my mother."

Pan's lips twitch at that, but Baelfire can't tell if its nervousness or humor. "Slightly..." he tries again, and then, his voice hardens. "Kill it."

Slightly hesitates then, and then closes his eyes, shaking his head, even as the rest of his body shakes with clear nervousness.

Pan lets out a sigh, his voice sounding almost patronizing when he speaks again, reminding Baelfire of the way the other villagers used to speak to his papa, when they weren't openly scorning him. "Slightly, I didn't want to have to do something like this."

Slightly gulps. He opens his mouth to speak, but Pan never gives him the chance. Instead, he opens his mouth, and says a summoning spell.

Baelfire has heard of it before. It is not quite unlike what one might use to control the Dark One; it is more in the strange tingling sound that follows the words, than the words themselves, that let Baelfire know what they mean.

Everything that happens next happens in a frenzied blur that Baelfire will try for some while not to remember. In the end, when Slightly is lying on the ground, his body twisted unnaturally, and the Shadow flies away as quickly as it comes, Baelfire knows that what has happened has left him dead.

 _"He rips your shadow right from your body._ Riiip," Felix had taunted, and Baelfire shivers as he sees firsthand what that entails.

He knows that he should not be too surprised; the boys had already killed a Neverbear, after all, and shown remarkably little compassion then. But, horrific as it had been to witness, Felix claimed it was the same Neverbear who injured Adam.

This is different. This is a human, a child, and one of their own.

And he runs, before he can rationalize this in his mind. Before he can tell himself that there's nowhere to go.

"Baelfire!" he hears someone shouting out after him, and thinks it might be Nibs, or it might be Pan.

Either way, it doesn't matter.

He isn't coming back willingly.

* * *

Baelfire gasps as the world refocuses, a blinding pain in the back of his head reminding him of what's happening.

He picks himself up, dusting off the twigs and dirt littering his body, before starting to run again. His head hurts now, a blinding pain roiling through his whole body at the sudden movements, but he knows that he cannot stop.

He knows this because if he does, he'll loose everything. He almost stopped once before, when his papa had begged him not to go through with the portal.

And he knows that he has even less reason not to go through with what he is trying to do now, but it still scares him, that the two moments, so vastly different, even connect in his mind.

He is so lost in his thoughts that he doesn't notice the vine until it is already twisting around his ankle, and he cries out, more in annoyance than pain, as it keeps him in place, unable to keep running. After a long moment's frustration, he manages to extract himself from the vine, but, as he starts to move again, it strikes, reminding him rather disconcertingly of that neverbear.

The vine snaps out, smacking into his stomach with a force that shouldn't be possible for a plant, and throwing him off of his feet. He lets out a grunt of pain as he goes down, trying to make as little noise as possible so that he won't be caught.

It turns out to not be worth the effort.

When he finally detangles himself, he crawls to his feet, careful to avoid the inching plant, and then freezes, hearing a twig crack above him.

Glancing up, Baelfire finds himself surrounded by Lost Boys, Pan at the head of them, frowning down at him in something that Baelfire can only describe as disappointment. though why he should have any right to be disappointed, Baelfire can't say.

"Put him in the cave," Pan says, his voice tinged with disgust, and then turns away, as if Baelfire is nothing more than a troubling nuisance who will learn his place soon enough.

Something hard and blunt smacks against the side of Baelfire's head, and his world fades into the blackness he hates so much.

A/N: So, it was a hard decision to have Slightly die, but thank you to Tif S for the help with this chapter, and letting me bounce ideas off of you, too!


	8. Yo Ho Ho

A/N: A large chunk of the dialogue in this chapter was tragically stolen from the tv episode, "Going Home." I don't normally like to steal the dialogue directly like this, which you probably don't believe after reading the first chapter, but I promise that there is a reason, as I'm sure you'll see.

 _There was chest on chest of Spanish gold_  
 _With a ton of plate in the middle hold_  
 _And the cabins riot with stuff un told_  
 _As they lay there that had took the plum_  
 _With a sightless glare and their lips struck dumb_  
 _While we shared all by the rule of thumb_  
 _Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum_

-Yo Ho Ho, from Treasure Island by RL Stevenson

Killian Jones is not a good man.

He has known this for a very long time - one tends to live a while longer than they are supposed to, in Neverland, with only their own morbid thoughts for company, and he knows when he first realized it, about himself.

It was not until after his brother had died. After all, in the navy, there was no reason to even be a good man, only to follow orders, and he had done that, for the most part, without much complaint.

He was following his brother, after all, and he would follow his brother to his death.

He'd always known that. He'd just never thought he wouldn't even be given the chance for that.

Killian first knew that he is not a good man on the very first ship his new band of pirates pilaged. It was a sloppy job, he remembers, none of them particularly sure of what they were doing, except for vague memories of hunting pirates themselves, before the war.

They'd gotten the gold, but it had come at the price of the death of the Captain and his teenaged daughter, and the marooning of the rest of the crew.

Killian had not tried to be a good man after that, not for a while.

And, after a time, he didn't understand why it should matter that he be one.

The ladies, the ones he met in bars, back when there were bars to frequent, called him a _scoundrel_ , like it was a thing to be lusted after, and the word had seemed to open doors he'd never have found, otherwise.

He used to love it when they called him that.

And then he met Milah.

Milah didn't think he was a scoundrel, or, if she did, she was too blinded at first to see it. She saw him as the faraway prince, sweeping down into her little village to sweep her up and escape with her, and for some reason that he is rather hesitant to define, Hook was perfectly happy to be that, for her, sworn to himself without really doing so that he would try to be that, for her, because...

He loves her.

He doesn't think she would still believe him to be a good man, now.

And she's here now; she appeared to him, and only to him, the night he sent Bae away, in his dreams, and she won't leave him alone, hasn't given him a moment's peace since he handed the boy over to _Him_.

He thinks that this place, this terrible world that he'd thought could become a paradise for the two of them, is the reason for her sudden appearance; he's never had hallucinations of the dead before this.

Constantly, she is beside him, a waif in the choppy sea wind, ever silent, ever watching, her dark eyes condemning him with every look, the rest of her body floating intangibly beside him, disappearing at the waist into little wisps of white smoke.

She is...tormenting him, he cannot help but think, punishing him for abandoning her son, even if she is still dead, and he konws that she won't leave him alone, even if that isn't like Milah at all.

Milah was never one to seek revenge. No, she liked to run from her past, her troubles, as fast as she could, but this waif has not yet left his presence.

She has been there even while he slept, inhabiting his dreams, though she doesn't talk in those, either; she is only a silent spectre, and that is somehow more disturbing than any nightmares he's ever had about her.

He thinks that, if she could speak, she would be telling him of her anger for him just as clearly as her ghostly eyes already do.

It's on the eighth day of this, or, at least, he thinks it is the eighth day, as one can never truly be certain of anything in Neverland, when he finally gives in.

He thinks that this is perhaps the most foolish and degrading thing he has ever done, coming back to the Island when he knows Pan has domain of it. When he swore an oath never to return to this place, the place where his brother was killed, and yet he knows there is likely no other way of getting out of this world now, not without help from someone on the Island.

Most suicidal besides, of course, thinking he could stand up to the Dark One without any harm.

And he wants to think that he is only here to find a way off the island, wants to think that surely Pan owes him, for handing over his newest Lost Boy ( _Bae_ ) without any trouble, merely to get into Pan's good graces.

He's afraid, though, that it isn't the only reason.

Hook sold the boy to Him, handed him over when Baelfire no longer wanted to be near him, partially because he knew the boy wanted to get away from him as quickly as possible, and didn't want him to be hurt by Hook's presence a moment longer, and partially because...if he is being honest, because he wanted the boy to hurt as much as he did.

It was childish, cruel, cowardly-

 _"You hated my father so much, you didn't even realize you were just like him!"_

Words shouted in anger by a child, and yet, Hook can't shake the feeling that the boy must know him better than he knows himself.

And Milah still glares at him, even as he orders the men to take a rowboat to the Island.

And doesn't that sting.

His men are silent as they row toward the shoreline, though their looks of terror speak loudly enough.

Finally, just as they are nearing the shoreline and Hook fancies he can almost see the ocean floor, Smee asks, with a meekness that is mocking at best, "Where are we going, Cap'n?"

Hook doesn't know exactly where they are going, but he has the general bearings, at least, he believes he does.

Besides, if the Island is still the same horrific nightmare that it was years ago, Pan will come to them, so it truly doesn't matter, at any rate, that Hook knows where they're going.

"To see if _He_ will allow us safe passage out of Neverland for delivering the boy to him, days ago. It's the least he could have done."

This is why he doesn't tell the men until they are almost to the shoreline, Hook thinks, with a small modicum of amusement, as the men all turn to stare in shock at their Captain.

Mr. Smee freezes, and Hook pretends not to notice, pressing on, until it is painfully obvious that his first mate does not intend to follow. "Mr. Smee!" he shouts without turning back around. "If you continue second-guessing my every move, I may find myself in need of a new mate, soon."

They both know the threat for what it is; shallow. They are in Neverland, after all, and, excepting the slim chance that Pan may offer them passage out of Neverland, there is little chance of Hook finding a replacement for Mr. Smee.

"But Capt'n," Smee tries, scurrying forward until they are standing abreast before Hook starts moving again, " _He_ is dangerous. We should be grateful that _He_ allowed us to get off with our lives, when we handed over the boy. _His_ Lost Ones did not seem surprised by his presence aboard our ship."

Hook shrugs. "Then he should be grateful we gave the boy over, and reward us for it in some manner," he bites out, "if he plans on keeping him."

And Smee glances up rather nervously at those words. "Cap'n, you can't be saying that-"

"That's enough, Mr. Smee," Hook hisses. He doesn't want to keep discussing the boy.

Doesn't think that he can, with the hole inside his chest, the heart that the Crocodile should have crushed rather than leaving him with such pain, pain and memories of Milah.

"Cap'n," Starkey attempts to reason with him, as Smee has given up doing so, even as their little dinghy crashes against the shoreline, "This is suicide. _He_ hasn't welcomed us onto the Island, not since we arrived in Neverland, and we barely escaped with our lives the last time."

Hook shrugs, taking a long whiff of his pipe and breathing the air out slowly, watching as it poofs out into the air and slowly vanishes. "We returned the boy to _Him_. Surely _He_ wouldn't be hostile to us now. Besides, what happened last time was no doing of Pan's, I'll warrant."

Starkey raises a brow, opens his mouth to argue this point again, but then a voice calls from up the beach, "You shouldn't be here, pirate."

Hook freezes, reaching instinctively for his sword and motioning for Starkey and Red to do the same, Smee having actually stayed on the ship in protest of what Hook plans to do.

He glances up the beach, to where the voice comes from. He is fairly sure he heard it before; the boy who headed the search for Baelfire aboard his ship, that first time.

Before Hook foolishly handed him over, and he doesn't even know this captor's name.

"We mean you no harm," Hook says, struggling to his feet and yet managing to maintain a perfect balance on the rocky waves beneath the dinghy. "We merely wish to speak to _Him_ , if we can."

The moment he stands, a barrage of arrows come his way, slapping against the waves and the rim of the dinghy, one missing Hook by a hair's thread. Behind him, Starkey swears colorfully, and Hook can hear him checking his musket.

The boy smirks as Hook quickly sits back down, raising hand and hook in a sign of surrender. "He hasn't called for you," he sing-songs, and Hook wonders if he could feel guilt at snapping the neck of a creature of _His_ , no doubt as twisted and immortal as he is, when the face is that of a child's.

"Well, I've a wish to see him," Hook says calmly, lowering his hand and sending the boy a grin. "And I've a feeling I wouldn't recognize his call."

The boy sneers. "Oh, I think you would." A pregnant pause. "Get out of the boat, _Captain_."

The title is said with such mockery that Hook almost doesn't want to comply, purely out of spite.

But he gets out of the landing boat, anyway, lifting his hook in warning when his men attempt to follow him.

The moment his boots smack against the white sands of the beach, everything changes abruptly.

Milah, or her apparition, whatever it is that's been following him about since he abandoned Bae, vanishes, a poof of smoke in the air, and he blinks at the place where she's been, surprised.

The very air seems different, now that he's standing on the Island, rather than water, and Hook wonders why that is, wonders how long its really been since he's stood on dry land, as time is so extinct here. A faint buzzing fills his ears at the very thought, or perhaps that is the humming of the Island.

The Lost Boys lower their arrows.

And their leader, who isn't Him but seems to have a superiority to the rest of these boys, smiles.

It is not, Hook thinks, a pleasant smile.

"He _wants_ to see you," the boy, Felix, Hook thinks might be his name, but he isn't sure how he knows this, says, as if this is some great honor, and Hook can only nod in answer. "...But only you and one other."

That is an easy decision to make; he has already scared Smee into submission, and so he knows the other man will listen to him and not attempt to antagonize the Lost Boys.

He nods to the little man, who, after paling dramatically, follows after him.

His men, especially Starkey, do not look pleased to be leaving their Captain alone with the Lost Ones, but he's counting on their fear of Him to prevent the men from following behind them, and he knows his men well.

The Lost Ones do not speak as they escort their (prisoners? guests?) through the heavily wooded forest, or at least, do not speak to Hook or Smee.

They seem to be conferring amongst themselves, but Hook isn't able to hear them clearly over the sudden crashing of waves against the shoreline behind them, and the sounds of animals, tittering through the forest. He has a feeling that, even if he did, he wouldn't be able to understand their words.

For some strange reason, he thinks that this is the Lost Ones' doing. Some sort of intimidation tactic, perhaps, though he's not intimidated, even if Smee clearly is.

They come to an abrupt halt in a small clearing of the Neverforest, and Hook glances around, taking in the sight of where they are, as he's been attempting to do since they left the beach. He has a feeling it will be a useful tactic, if he needs to remember his way back to the shoreline quickly.

He takes a look at the boys surrounding them, remembers the threat of a shadow being ripped from a body, and wonders how far he would make it, if he attempted to run for the beach.

Wonders what the hell is wrong with him, that he decided to do this in the first place.

"Captain," a soft voice interrupts these rather morbid thoughts, and Hook spins to face Him, the one he has come to speak to.

This is not the foul creature whom all the island fears that Hook has imagined, after long years of nightmares about this beast who killed his brother with a sickening smile and pretended compassion.

Yes, he knows what the boy looked like, remembers a child who seemed kind, and yet had so much evil buried within.

And yet...

He is a boy, not much older than Baelfire in body, though there is something about him that marks him as ageless, the moment Hook lays eyes on him. He is the same age as he was then. Hook does not think he's changed at all.

He is clearly not a boy, though he looks no older than Felix.

No, Pan is something else entirely, and it shows in his eyes when they meet Hook's. They are far too old for that of a child's eyes, far too keen, and, in one glance, they see far too much.

Just as, when he walks, it is not with the bumbling air of a child, but with that of a man grown, confident in his abilities, dark though they be. And when he tells Felix to go, it is spoken with an air of authority that Hook's brother did not even have, back in the navy.

He is just as Hook remembers him, long ago, and just as he doesn't.

He is once again worried for Baelfire, even if he's sworn to forget about the child, after handing him over to this... _Pan_.

And Baelfire isn't here; at the very least, he cannot see him in the crowd of Lost Ones at all, and the knowledge is rather disconcerting.

"Captain," Pan greets, and his voice is melodious, sweet as a child's, or a bird's, and something about it feels so utterly wrong that Hook has to force himself not to flinch. "A pleasure to finally meet you again."

Hook glances round at the Lost Boys, all surrounding Pan in a semi-circle, glaring at Hook in a way that lets him know they are anything but pleased, and swallows.

"Pleasure," he says, too sweetly, pulling on all of the charm that he's ever learned in bars.

"I must confess, I was hoping to see you sooner," Pan continues, looking completely unperturbed. "It's been a long time, and you've spent quite a while in Neverland without coming to say hello again, Captain."

The way he says that word, _Captain_ , makes Hook shudder.

Hook takes a deep breath, attempting to regain his composure. "Well, you know how it is..." he drawls. "So much to do around here."

Pan's eyes flash with what Hook can almost think is amusement. He wonders if Pan was amused when he told Hook how to save his brother, knowing it would kill him. "Yes, there is," he says, in that same soft voice. A pause, and Hook nearly startles as Pan is suddenly right next to him, as he remembers that this boy who isn't really a boy can fly.

"What do you want, Captain?"

Hook's lips twitch. "I thought I'd just come to say 'hallo," he says, with that legendary Jones smirk that hides his nervousness, even as the hook where his hand once was raises a bit.

Pan misses nothing. "Are you here to kill me?" he asks, eying the hook. "Because you're gonna have to try harder than that."

Hook shakes himself, suddenly aware that the emotions he is feeling are not entirely his own. After all, he may hate this...creature, responsible for his brother's death, but he hates the Dark One more, because that death is all too fresh in his mind.

That is why he is here, he reminds himself.

"Of course not. I gave you the boy back," he says, with something that might be called false bravado. "Just like you wanted."

Pan nods. "So you did," he says coolly, folding his arms across his chest. Hook wonders if that's some signal, for he sees the Lost Ones seem to tense as one, when it happens.

Hook swallows, unaccountably nervous. Or perhaps there is a reason to be nervous; where the bloody hell is the boy, anyway? "I don't usually do something for nothing."

Pan raises an eyebrow. "I was under the impression that you didn't."

The threat is rather clear; he can even see Felix, that fiend who seems to be Pan's right hand, lifting a finger to his throat in reminder. The other boys, though, seem almost subdued by the words.

Hook experiences a sinking feeling in his gut, then, wondering if he hasn't seen the boy because the boy is dead.

(Stop this. It's not why you're here.)

"I want safe passage out of Neverland, for me and me crew," he tells Pan, and waits.

He doesn't have long to wait. After a moment's thought, Pan nods, as though he can see the sense in this.

Hook knows that he should find that more suspicious, knows that he should wonder why Pan is giving in so easily, but he tells himself that it's merely because Pan doesn't want him here, has made it rather clear that his presence, at the very least, is unwelcome in Neverland, has been since he arrived.

"That's...not unreasonable," Pan says finally, and Hook releases a breath he didn't even know he was holding. "Though it will mean that you won't be able to return to Neverland, of course, without my saying so. Magic is...finicky, like that."

And, from the way he says it, Hook doubts very much that Pan will want him to return.

He nods his head in agreement. "Very well," he says, his voice coming out lower than he intended.

Pan's lips twitch, but he says nothing, merely holding out his hand. A moment later, a pulse of green magic flows from him, wrapping around the hand and then vanishing. In its place is a little brown box, seemingly harmless.

Hook eyes it dubiously. "And how is that supposed to get me out of here? Is there a magic bean within?"

"I had it made to thank you, Captain, for bringing the boy to me when you...found him," Pan says, holding the little box out to him. "And...something like that. When you open it, it will merely do as you wish."

And everything in Hook screams at him not to take it, although he is not certain whether this is because he is afraid of whatever is inside, or because it feels like a betrayal to Baelfire to accept a gift for handing him over to Pan.

But...isn't that what he came here for? He needs to leave Neverland, by any means possible, and, without a magic bean, this seems to be the only way.

"And where is the boy, if I may ask?" Hook glances up from the little box. He tries to make his voice sound unconcerned, but, by the look on Pan's face, knows that he has failed utterly.

Pan raises an eyebrow. "Does it matter? He is with me, now. You won't see him again, probably, but he is...where he belongs."

And Hook does _not_ like the sound of that. At all, even if he's convinced himself he doesn't give a damn about the Dark One's son. "I would like to take a look at him, one last time. To...make certain he is all right. He was once someone important to me."

Pan quirks a brow. "But not anymore?"

And Hook doesn't have an answer for that.

Pan sighs, looking genuinely pitying as he spreads his hands in a helpless gesture. "He doesn't wish to see you."

"And how could you possibly know that?" Hook demands, knowing that he no longer just sounds like a concerned man who met the boy once. He actually sounds as though he...cares.

That is a disturbing thought, and one he thrusts away as quickly as it came. The boy is the Dark One's son; his only interest in Baelfire is using him against the man who killed his true love, Hook reminds himself.

And besides, the boy doesn't want to see the man who abandoned him to these Lost Boys, who he thinks is just like his coward of a father.

It sounds weak, even to his own ears.

Pan grins. "I know my Lost Boys, Pirate. They belong to me, after all."

Hook is glaring daggers, and, worse, he knows it. "I trust that you haven't hurt the lad."

Pan snorts. "Do you care this much about every castaway that happens to make it aboard your ship, Hook?" he says the name like an insult, grinning as he does.

Hook frowns. "Of course not. But the boy had some uses, if you're tiring of him."

Namely, leverage against the Dark One for a certain dagger. He doesn't think that Bae would appreciate the sentiment, though, if he is somewhere in the crowd of Lost Boys, listening, so he doesn't say this aloud.

And besides, even if he can't have the boy back, he can find some other way to get the dagger.

It almost hurts him to say the words, though, and he hopes unreasonably that, beneath the gruff tone, Bae recognizes that. If he's here.

"Well then," and Pan's smile is postively icy, "You may rest assured that I am not, and you may be on your way now, _Captain_. I'm sure it will be a pleasure to do business with you, in the future."

Hook finds himself nodding, and taking the little box, feeling a strange thrum of magic rush through him as he takes it, and knows that he would like nothing more than to take out his cutlass and tear open the brat's throat.

* * *

"Mr. Smee," he drawls, "You might want to pick up the pace. It would do our journey and your physique some good."

Smee sighs. "Sorry, C'ptain."

They've been walking, it seems, for some time. When they went to Pan's camp with Felix and the other Lost Ones, Hook doesn't remember it having taken this long, but then, he supposes there must be some sort of magic laced about the Island, that it might do the bidding of Pan and his faithful.

He's likely stringing Hook along on purpose, finding immense enjoyment in watching Hook flail through the woods, back to the beach.

Or they're lost.

There's a rustle in the bushes near by, and Smee pauses, turning back to look. "It's just this place gives me the creeps."

Hook curses lousy pirates under his breath for the thousandth time before answering, "I've found a way off this accursed island, Smee, and we won't be here much longer. We've dawdled here for too long. Now that I know there's a dagger to end the Dark One, we must return to our land. My purpose is renewed."

He thinks he hears Smee grumbling behind him, "Why can't your purpose be back at the ship where it's safe?" and wonders why he hired a first mate who questions everything he does. "Bad enough we had to face Pan once. What'll happen when he realizes we've been snooping about?"

Hook shrugs. They aren't exactly snooping about, and he's not completely lost.

He's no fool, to trust Pan at his word, and whatever is in this box, he doesn't want to open it until he's returned to the safety of his ship, to ensure that it's genuine.

If it's not, if it's another one of Pan's tricks, he wants another way out of Neverland, and he knows the only way to accomplish that must be from the Island.

They've tried simply sailing away. Many times, in fact.

But the sea surrounding the Island goes on forever, they've found, with no other shorelines in sight save that of Skull Rock and a few small slabs of rock sticking out of the water that are barely large enough to stand on.

So, whatever it is that Pan gets his magic from, has his ability to send the Shadow back and forth between worlds, it is on this island.

It has to be.

And that sounds a far sight better than using something Pan gave to him without a second thought, or sign of hesitation.

Little boys liked to play with their food, after all, however old they may be in soul, and Hook has learned this to be rather true of Pan, to his own detriment.

It's how he lost his brother. Yes, he will be very careful when he opens the box, to ensure that it truly is the gift Pan claims.

He's so lost in these thoughts that he doesn't see their attacker until she's already attacking him.

The woman - for, he realizes belatedly, she is indeed a woman - shoves him to the forest floor before he can pull lose his sword, and he lets out a gasp of surprise as he falls. He sees Smee, lying on the forest floor beside him, knocked out cold, and lets out a groan.

She grins, pressing the heel of her palm into his chin while her other hand brandishes a dagger, and Hook has to resist the urge to roll his eyes.

The one time that he bothers to come on the Island, Pan is in full force against him. Well, if this is the best that Pan can do, he is no longer quite as impressed with the Boy than he once was.

"Aren't you a bit old for a Lost Boy?" she sneers down at him, and Hook blinks in surprise.

If she thinks he is a Lost Boy and this drove her to attack him, perhaps she is not an enemy, as he thought.

"I can assure you, lass, I'm not one of Pan's brigade, and I am anything but a boy." He winks then, piling on all of his charm, for it's been a while since he had the opportunity to woo a woman.

Since Milah's death, in fact, but somehow flirting doesn't seem disloyal. It seems...right, at this moment. And if Hook knows anything about himself, has learned anything about himself in the last few weeks, it is that he is a survivor.

That he will do anything to get what he wants.

She falters for a moment, and that moment is just long enough for him to shove her off of him and check on his first mate.

Satisfied that Smee is not in immediate danger, Hook slowly turns around.

Apparently, she isn't satisfied with his answer, for she is still holding the knife toward him, and he can see a gleam in her eyes that means she is quite ready to use it.

"Then who are you, and why are you here?" she demands, and he suddenly realizes how frightened she is, though she is doing an admirable job in her attempts to hide it. She is still holding the knife against his throat, and her other hand reaches out toward him, a clear warning.

"I'm the Captain of the Jolly Roger," he says, with a smirk and a sweeping bow; she is not impressed, and only twists her hand through his hair in warning. "And I'm here searching for some magic to help me make my way back home to my land." Then he smirks, as the dagger she holds presses against his skin, for he finds that he recognizes such a weapon. "You wouldn't happen to have any, would you? Magic?"

She sighs, letting him up, though she looks rather reluctant to do so. "Fresh out." Her eyes are still studying him, waiting for him to turn his back, perhaps, so that she can bury her wand in it or turn him to stone.

He isn't certain fairies have that ability, but he wouldn't put such a thing past her.

He raises an incredulous eyebrow. He knew from the moment she attacked Smee, brandishing what might have once been a wand but what was clearly now a weapon, that this was a fairy. Of some variation, for, before this, he was under the impression that fairies were rather small.

"If I didn't know any better, I'd say you're a fairy. But a fairy without magic?" he demands, and she frowns a bit at this. "I don't buy that for a second."

"And if I didn't know any better, I'd say you're a pirate," and it is almost defensive, after the way she threatened him and knocked out his man, that Hook laughs.

"Guilty," he says, with a mocking little bow. "So tell me, fairy, can you help me?"

She sneers again. "Help you?" she looks about ready to brandish the blade again at that point, but he moves back before she can. "Aren't you worried about me slitting your throat?"

"Well, that's not the fairy way. You should be helping me find my 'happy ending,' or something equally as precious." He grins.

"I _was_ a fairy," she says softly, almost sadly. "I'm not a fairy anymore," she snaps, harder, perhaps, than she intended, for something behind her eyes softens after the words. "I lost my wings a long time ago. As for your happy ending, you're on your own." He reaches for his sword then, realizing that this fairy may require some force to help him, and he isn't about to give up.

"Watch it!" she hisses.

Hook smirks. "It's not a weapon." And then he has pulled the bottle of ale from his jacket. "At least, not in the traditional sense." He uncaps it, offering some to her. "Rum?"

It is some time later, after they have both had their fill of rum and yet before Smee has the chance to awaken, that Tinker Bell, sitting against a log and watching him with markably less apprehension than before her first sip, asks, "What's so important, back home?"

She has the voice of one who understands his longing all too well, but has given in to resignation a long time ago. Perhaps she seeks to find hope from his story, but his is rather grim, as well, he thinks.

Hook hesitates. "The Dark One murdered the woman I love." He plucks the bottle out of her hands, taking a long swig before passing it back. The liquid burns down his throat, comforting suddenly. "And I intend to make him suffer for it."

He tries and fails not to think of the boy, standing before him with those sad eyes, Milah's eyes, accusing him of being "just like" the very man he still seeks to kill.

Does he really want to kill Baelfire's father?

It is the first time the question has come to him, like that, but he forces the guilt down with the reminder that the boy seemed to hold no love for the crocodile while they were together, and wishes nothing to do with either of them now.

Bloody hell, he is just like the crocodile in that regard, he supposes.

She frowns then, glancing sideways at the pirate, as if she can sense the sudden change in mood. "And killing him is your 'happy ending'? Even if by doing so, you could end your own existence."

Hook shrugs. "I'd risk my life for two things; love and revenge. I lost the first, and if I die for my vengeance, then that's enough satisfaction for me."

He doesn't know why he shares this with her; blames it on the rum, he supposes, though he knows that isn't it.

She's listening.

And he suddenly doesn't want to talk about the Dark One anymore, but about someone else. Someone who he could love, still, someone whom he didn't lose, but rather, pushed away.

Hook flinches, taking another gulp of the rum and forcing those thoughts from his head before he says something that he'll truly regret, something he won't be able to blame on the rum, in the morning.

Baelfire left, he reminds himself. He offered Milah's boy a chance at a new life, and the boy spat in his face.

No, there is nothing left for him now but vengeance.

"That sounds like a morbid existence," she says finally, and he glances at her in confusion at the words. "I mean, living only for those two things."

"Well, you fairies believe in true love, call it the most powerful magic of all, if I'm not mistaken," he shrugs, "and now that I've lost mine, I suppose I'm destined to be the villain, out for revenge."

She blinks. "That isn't it at all, Captain. True love comes in many forms, not just the kind between two lovers. Love is everywhere, in everything. Sometimes you just have to go searching for it, and when you do find it, you can't let it go for something like revenge."

"Eh?" and damn him, Hook can't keep his bloody mouth shut, because it _hurts_ , and, for one moment, he wants her to hurt just as badly. "And how's that working out for you?"

Her lips press into a thin line, but she answers him, and he is impressed, at least, by that. "I've found love in Neverland, even if it isn't the kind I wanted. But just because _you've_ lost the woman you loved, doesn't mean there's nothing left to live for than avenging her. And wanting to do so doesn't make you a villain; it only shows how deep your love for her was."

He frowns. "You're surprisingly insightful, for a fairy. You fairies usually aren't this...helpful."

"Well, your drink certainly helped with that," she smirks at him, and then her expression turns dour. "And besides, the last person that I attempted to give advice to wouldn't listen, so I suppose I am laying it out rather thickly for you."

"Oh? Some Prince in search of a damsel in distress who wasted your advice and turned to soldiering?"

She rolls her eyes. "Contrary to what you seem to think, the fairies only help people who need it, not just misogynistic royals," and, did she wink at him?

And _that_ gives him a sudden idea. "Aren't there others of your kind, in Neverland? Fairies that can help me with their magic. Can get me home."

She frowns, her gaze turning suddenly hard, and he knows in a moment that things have changed with that question, though he is unsure why. "You would be better off going to Pan," she hisses in disgust.

Hook blinks. "That bad, eh?"

She rolls her eyes. "The creatures here that most closely resemble the fairies of the Enchanted Forest," she gives him a searching look, "I assume that is where you're from, anyway, are not like the ones you know."

"Well, I've already tried Pan," he grins, "But, if these creatures are dark, like you say, maybe they'll agree to help a villain like me for a change."

She snorts disdainfully. "I certainly wouldn't count on it. They are pixies, treacherous, wild creatures. They hold no love for anyone but themselves, and use their magic for dark purposes. They certainly haven't tried to fight against Pan openly since..."

"Since what?" Hook asks, but now the exiled fairy is staring accusingingly at him.

"That drink you gave me. It loosens the tongue. I've said far more than I should have already." Oddly enough, she doesn't sound angry with him, only bemused.

She glances up as if to check the time, though it is a wonder to him how she could possibly see through the thick canopy covering them. "I must go."

He glares after her. "Now, look, luv-," but she is gone.

And then Smee, from his position on the ground, lets out a low groan.

And Hook has a very hard time believing that the fairy is in posession of no magic whatsoever.

He pulls Smee to his feet, grumbling to himself that he should have brought Starkey instead, for, though Smee is his most trusted mate, Starkey would be better suited for trekking through the woods alongside him.

Smee lets out another groan. "What...was that thing, Cap'n?" he asks, glancing around at the woods furtively.

And Hook sighs, glancing into the rapidly darkening woods after her. "I'm not certain, Mr. Smee. Can you walk?"

He can see the confliction on the other man's face. How badly he wishes to claim that he cannot, so that they can return to the ship and stop this 'nonsense,' as he earlier had called it.

But Mr. Smee has never lied to his Captain yet, and Hook is happy to see that he does not now.

The first mate nods, albeit beligerently, and follows him.

If he noticies that Hook's stance is even more that of a defeated man than before, if he can remember scraps of a conversation that he was too disoriented to hear, something about there being nothing else to help them in this place, he says nothing as he follows behind his Captain, stalking through the forest.

* * *

When he reaches the Jolly Roger again, feeling foolishly safe now that he and his men are back on her, he hesitates, and then opens the little box that Pan has given him, wondering what trap lies in it. He knows he shouldn't open it, knows that, truly.

But Milah is standing beside him, a wispy shadow, and she looks just as curious as he, and he knows that, if he can get out of this hellhole, where Milah's ghost confronts him at every turn, and Milah's son makes him feel (guilty) for his plans for the Dark One, it will be better.

He hesitates, and then decides to trust Pan, even if that record is not an entirely clean one.

He can hear Mr. Smee telling the others that this is their way home, that they'll be free now.

He knows the second he opens it that he should have left it closed, that Pan was banking on him doing just this, and that he would have been better off tossing it into the sea.

It's too late, now.

The yellow magic from within the box flares to life, flying up and into the air and Hook barely has the time to let out a startled yelp when the stuff is coating him in it, whatever it is, and he gasps, sinking to his knees on the deck as an unfamiliar pain wracks through his body.

When he is able to gather his wits about him once more, the first things he sees are the metal bands now wrapped around his wrists, where they hadn't been a moment before.

He curses, vividly, every foul word he knows, for he's seen such manacles before, a long time ago, back when he was a humble sailor in the King's Navy.

They are slave manacles, meant to bind a slave to their master by magic, lest they ever attempt to disobey. The old king, the one whom Killian Jones used to sail for, used them on his harem, and on prisoners of war. Hook can remember that horrible tradition all too clearly now, where most of his far past seems to hide behind a blur, beyond Liam's death.

They only disappear when the master has died.

"You didn't really think it would be that easy, did you?" Pan's voice teases, and he spins to see the immortal boy standing beside him on the beach; or rather, hovering above the sand, grinning like a child. "I'd have thought, after facing the Dark One, that you'd have learned not to ignore the finer points of a deal, Captain."


	9. Slave to Your Addiction

" _That's what a ship is, you know. It's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs but what a ship is. What the Black Pearl really is...is freedom_."

-Pirates of the Carribean

Hook reaches for his sword instinctively, and in the next moment curses again; it will not be removed from its sheath, not when it knows that he means to use it against Pan, not while he is still wearing these damned manacles that are so tight they nearly slice into his skin; a warning, no doubt.

Starkey moves to pull out his own sword, but only the handle comes out of the sheath, the blade itself remaining within. He lets out a foul curse, shoving the handle back into place.

Pan gives him a hard look, and Hook has no doubt that that bit of magic is his doing. "Try not to insult my mother like that, Captain; she was a right bitch for abandoning and forgetting about me, I think, but you should know better than to talk about...loose women like that."

"What the hell is this?" Hook demands icily, holding up his wrists in annoyance, and ignoring the slight against Milah for now. There will be time to wring the little fae's neck, if that's what the blasted creature is, once he's got these damned things off.

Pan looks like he is holding back laughter, and he spins past the crew and toward where Hook is standing with ease. None of the men dare to attack him, not with all of the stories they've heard. "You said you wanted to be able to leave Neverland, _Captain_ ," he taunts. "This," he gestures to the manacles, "is your chance to do so."

Smee speaks up then, all righteous indignation, though Hook can see him quaking from where he stands behind Red and Rodney. "What have you done to our Captain? I don't understand."

"No, you wouldn't," Pan says, with mocking compassion. "You're only a simple sailor, after all. Waiting for your orders." And this time, he does laugh, and Hook hears the words he doesn't say. _Another kind of slave_. "All right, Captain. I'll spell it out for you. You can leave, now. Those manacles...well, they're imbued with the same magic that allows me to control the Shadow. You can leave Neverland, so long as you're wearing them."

"I gather that's not all there is to them," Hook growls, silently fuming.

Pan winks at him. "No," he admits, pinching his thumb and forefinger together. "There's a little wrinkle in your happy ending. A...delay."

"Leaving Neverland is not my happy ending," Hook snaps, and Pan laughs, a rich, full sound, that is at the same time sick and twisted.

"No, but killing the Dark One is. Or did you forget that?" his eyes flash, and, for a moment, his eyes radiate anger, before that disappears behind amusement once more. "One forgets ever so many things in Neverland."

"I've never forgotten that," Hook grits out. He wants to tear this wicked creature to pieces, as he's always wanted to do since he betrayed Liam, as he wants to kill the Dark One.

But for the first time, he can't even try to act on that desire.

"Oh?" Pan raises a brow. "Even when you were busy playing dad to his son?" he smirks at the look on Hook's face. "Oh, don't look so glum, Hook! It isn't the end of the world, after all. Just the end of your freedom." A pause, during which Pan moves to lean lazily against the ship's wheel, one hand slinging itself over the spokes as if he owns it. "Which is worth more to you?"

Hook doesn't answer, though his eyes narrow in irritation at the sight of Pan touching any part of his ship. What would be the point?

"Let me explain how this works," Pan drawls, seeming to preen under the hatred Hook feels, simmering just below the surface. "The cuffs put you in my service. You don't necessarily _have_ to do anything I want, but you can't harm me, and you can't...outright disobey me."

"I know how the bloody cuffs work, Pan!" Hook snaps. "I've seen them before."

"Hmm. Then you know that they'll allow you to leave Neverland, whenever I like. As well as your men, too."

Smee's mouth drops open. It would be comical, Hook supposes, were he not still so furious.

He thinks, in this moment, he has never hated anyone save the Dark One as much as he hates Pan.

"How is that possible?"

"Like I said, the manacles have the same magic as the Shadow," Pan says, as if he's giving a particularly rousing lecture.

Hook wonders how far he would get before the manacles stopped him, if he tried to stick his hook in the man-boy. Of course, it doesn't matter. The brat's immortal, after all, and not just in the way that everyone in Neverland stays young for as long as they're there.

One can still die, here. He's seen it happen often enough to know.

"You'll go anywhere I like, any time I want you to. You're my servant now; you and your whole ship will do my bidding forever. But...at least you'll get to leave here. And who knows? You might even get your chance to skin a crocodile, after a while."

"And why shouldn't I just sail away and never return, the moment I get to another world?" Hook demands.

Pan smirks. "I dare you to try. I do so ever like games."

Hook takes that to mean that it is impossible to do so, but then, he was expecting that. It would be akin to outright disobedience, after all.

Outright.

There are ways to get around that little loophole, he thinks, and then curses inwardly. He is practically a slave to the little demon, and here he is, trying to find ways to...

"And if I don't do as you say?"

Pan smirks. "Oh, dear Captain, I thought you said you understood how this works." His lips twitch into a full grin. "You'll die, of course. And without ever getting your revenge on the Crocodile. Your life would be for nothing. How disappointing that would be."

Hook growls, annoyed more than he cares to admit by the words. "And what is this for?" he demands, irritation bubbling up into fury. "So that you can have another toy to play with, _boy_?"

Pan raises a palm to his chest in mock offense, pushing himself off of the ship's wheel; the men before him dive out of the way like frightened children, and Hook just sighs. "Of course not, Captain. I have far too much respect for you for that."

Hook raised a brow. "Then what?"

Pan smirks. "Well, let me see. Immortality has its perks, of course, but sometimes boys can simply get bored here, Captain."

He doesn't quite know how to respond to that, so Hook keeps his mouth shut.

Starkey, however, where he stands by the Captain's cabin, does not. "We returned the boy to you, did we not?"

Pan scoffs. "Late, but yes, I suppose you did. What of it?"

Red looks furious as he spits, "So, shouldn't you let us go, now?"

This time, Pan just laughs, staring at Red until the man takes a step backward and stumbles over a bit of rope before falling to the ground.

"A pirate, demanding fairness," Pan smirks. "Imagine that."

"You've had your fun," Hook grits out then, stalking forward until he is standing just before the boy now, though the other does not look at all intimidated, as well he might. "Now get off my ship, unless you have anything else of note to say. I'm sure your wishes are made clear enough through these." And he holds up the manacles, and struggles not to be sick at the sight of them.

Pan raises an eyebrow; perhaps to remind him that he has no way of enforcing his words, that Pan owns him now, and will leave whenever he damn well pleases, but he doesn't say any of those things.

Instead, his feet come up off of the deck of the ship, and, in the next moment, he is the air, flying back to that blasted island with the grace of a fairy, and Hook wonders if the no-longer fairy's words are right, because the pixies and Pan are just as evil as one another.

"What do we do now, Captain?" one of the men asks then, and suddenly every eye of those still on the ship turn to him, where they had been on Pan just moments earlier.

He stares at them for a long moment.

Days ago, he was used to this. Used to his men looking up to him, to having the answers.

But he doesn't, not now. And he doesn't know what to say.

He's left standing there, completely lost, for a full moment, before something else answers for him.

The wind picks up, swirls, and the bracelets around his wrists glow golden with magic.

He can hear Milah's voice, whispering close to his ear, a billow of wind, begging him not to leave her son, but he brushes it away irritably, because there's nothing he can do, now, even if he wants to.

They land in Wonderland, not the Enchanted Forest, and Hook finds himself wondering if the Dark One's dagger can kill any immortal being, for, when he finds it, that's what he intends to do with it.

Even if it means nothing, for he is not truly free of that infernal place, in more ways than one, Hook is determined to enjoy his newfound freedom from Neverland, however long it lasts.

But, as the day goes on, and he knows that, eventually, it will draw to a close and he will be sucked back to that infernal island, he can almost pretend that the 'errand' he is performing for Pan is not one forced upon him, because he finally has some small amount of freedom. And that isn't enough, but

When morning comes, a real, vivid morning, and not another day that is not really another day passing; Hook is tired and feels older, even though he knows that he cannot have aged too much over one night when he has not aged for many, many years whilst in Neverland.


End file.
